I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. He does it so that people will fear him. (Ecclesiastes 3:14, NIV)
Mike Whan did not set out to become the commissioner of the LPGA. If you had told him in his 20s that this was where he was headed, he would have been happy enough to hear it. But it wasn’t in his plans.
All Whan was really trying to do back then was what most men set out to do: get his business feet on the ground and make the kind of money that would provide his family with a comfortable life. When you’re a Type A personality in sales with a large company like Proctor & Gamble, chances are good you’ll do fine. Whan did.
So further opportunities came his way. Some looked like golf, as when he became VP of Marketing for TaylorMade in the mid-90s. But eventually Whan became CEO of Mission Hockey, working with two NHL owners to build an international equipment brand. By the time Whan walked away from Mission, he was ready to stay close to home and dote on his family, who had made a lot of accommodations for traveling dad.
Then came the call from the recruiter. “I’ve got the next job for you,” he said. “It’s the commissioner of the LPGA.”
Whan declined. He suggested others. A year passed. The job remained open, but still he said no. Finally, a former commissioner made the appeal, hitting Whan at the heart of his values. He could no longer back down.
When Mike Whan began his tenure as LPGA commissioner in early 2010, the Tour was in trouble. Today, it is thriving. New sponsors and events have helped fill out the schedule, more than 2,500 ladies play the Tour and serve as teaching professionals through the LPGA, and the LPGA may have more international impact than any other single sports organization outside the International Olympic Committee.
Whan admits he likes order in his life, but he also confesses that such order was lost when it came to his path to the LPGA. “All those years I thought I was in control,” he says, “God was organizing the details of my life to bring me here.” And there we find our full lesson for today: There are no accidents in God’s universe. He does what he will and he does it to last. For his glory. For his fame.
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Jeff Hopper
September 2, 2016
Copyright 2016 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.