With the pounding surf of the North Shore as a picturesque backdrop five months ago, LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens touted her "Vision 2010" plan for the Tour's future.

Turns out some of the top LPGA players' own vision for 2010 now no longer includes Bivens.

If the embattled commissioner is forced out — and a group of prominent players has reportedly asked for her resignation — Hawai'i will have more reason than most to applaud her departure.

Some of the more head-shaking episodes in Bivens' rocky leadership of the LPGA have played out in or around Hawai'i, including going from three LPGA tournaments a year ago to the likelihood of none next year.

The announced departure of the Kapalua Classic last week might turn out to have been the final straw in Bivens' tenure. It was two days after the announcement that http://www.Golfweek.com said 15 top players met with the player directors to discuss Bivens' leadership and then sent a letter to the LPGA Board of Directors calling for her resignation.

The Kapalua event, which would have been in its second year without a sponsor, underlines the sagging prospects of an LPGA Tour, which has lost seven tournaments in two years and faces the possibility of further cancellations and defections.

Sadly, the decline of the field comes at a time when the LPGA has a young and exciting lineup of players, likely the best it is ever put on display.

Its hard times are, of course, complicated by the sliding economy. But the LPGA, in Bivens' charge, has exacerbated the problems with several curious decisions and poor timing.

Her vision included letting a number of sponsorships run down so that they could be uniformly aligned for 2010. Nice in theory in better times, perhaps, until the economy started to tank. At that point, it should have been time to renew and lock down as many sponsorships as possible, rather than let them dangle. Worse yet, the LPGA inflexibly sought to demand more from tournaments and sponsors.

Maybe not all that surprising given a number of poorly thought-out moves from headquarters. In February, Bivens dumped 15-year sponsor SBS for a rival that spelled the end to the SBS Open at Turtle Bay. SBS took its money to the PGA Tour and the former Mercedes Championships on Maui.

Earlier she had to retreat on the threat to bar foreign players who didn't attain mandatory levels of fluency in English. There was a standoff with the media at the former Fields Open at Ko Olina.

The question shouldn't be whether Bivens is shown the door by the LPGA, but what took so long to finally push her out it?