How many times has Carolyn Bivens blown it with her short-sighted ideas that led to embarrassing fiascoes for the women's tour since taking over as LPGA commissioner three years ago?

Let me count the ways. Well, then again, maybe not. There are space limitations, after all. But obviously, it has been more than enough that some tour members met last week and recommended in a letter to the LPGA Tour's board that Bivens be replaced with a new leader to rebuild relationships with long-time sponsors.

Imagine the number of hangook Hancocks there'd be if South Koreans on the LPGA Tour were asked to sign. Let alone golf fans in Hawai'i, who have seen LPGA tournaments go from three in a year to zero in 2010. That's three of the seven events gone from the schedule since 2007 with a few more in limbo. The LPGA might have gone worldwide with 120 foreign players. But it's still an American tour. Yet, after this week's U.S. Open, which is run by the USGA, the LPGA Tour doesn't have another tournament at home until the Safeway Classic the last week of August because of the Women's British Open, the Evian Masters and the Solheim Cup and three off weeks.

Sure, the sagging economy hasn't helped. But had Bivens displayed people skills, some of the tournaments as well as some of her staff might still be with us. Instead, sponsors were turned off, saying enough already.

Take the three local LPGA events — the Field's Open in Hawai'i, the SBS Open at Turtle Bay and the LPGA Kapalua Classic:

OK, perhaps the end of the Field's Open's three-year run in 2008 at Ko Olina can't be blamed on Bivens, although she nearly blew the inaugural out of the water with a ham-handed policy involving credentials. More later.

But it's hard not to blame Bivens for the demise of the SBS Open and Kapalua Classic. As commissioner, the buck stops with her and, sure enough, sponsor's bucks have stopped. The LPGA had a great thing going with the season-opening event at the Turtle Bay Resort. All it had to do was keep the sponsoring Seoul Broadcasting System company happy.

Instead, Bivens not only severed a 15-year relationship that was nurtured to its fruition with the SBS Open by previous LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw, she offended SBS by signing up with a rival cable television company in South Korea. If that wasn't bad enough, the deal was announced — during the week of this year's SBS Open. Talk about bad timing. Thus ended a five-year run of the SBS Open at Turtle Bay. Happily, not the presence of SBS. It took its bucks and joined up with the PGA Tour instead, and signed a 10-year contract to host the season-opening SBS Championship at Kapalua's Plantation Course, beginning next January, when Mercedes-Benz pulled out as sponsor.

As for the one-and-done LPGA Kapalua Classic, could it have been saved? At least, Kapalua's Gary Planos thought so. Citing huge company losses, Planos, on behalf of the tournament's organizers, asked the LPGA to defer this year's event in view of still not finding a title sponsor with the idea of resuming the five-year commitment in 2010. Instead of replying, "Gee, we understand times are tough, sure," an LPGA official told The Associated Press, "The LPGA will vigorously enforce its legal rights under the contract." Nice going, guys.

With Bivens, it has always been my way or the highway, even though her ideas more often than not have run into road blocks or dead-ends. Who can forget the flap she raised last year with her English-as-the-only-language edict? Suspending young foreign (read South Korean) players if they didn't learn conversant English in two years? That it was quickly rescinded only emphasized how badly thought out it was in the first place. But the memory of it lingered as a public relations mess that the LPGA had to overcome.

But that messy bit of PR wasn't the first for Bivens. That came during the 2006 Fields Open in Hawai'i, the second tournament in her first year as commissioner. She unilaterally imposed credential restrictions that caught the media completely off-guard at Ko Olina. She came up with this bright idea that the media should turn over rights to their stories and photos to the LPGA in order to be credentialed. That led to a boycott by both Honolulu dailies and AP in an event that Michelle Wie was playing in her first tour event in Hawai'i as a pro. The Advertiser's Ann Miller had to interview Wie in the parking lot after her opening round.

Like all things Bivens, that idea was also quickly rescinded.

Oh, the LPGA will be back in Hawai'i some day. The LPGA has left Hawai'i before. Next time, though, here's hoping it's with a new commissioner on board. Where have you gone, Ty Votaw?