First-round Fields Open in Hawai'i leader Lorena Ochoa had just shot a remarkable 8-under-par 64 when she sat down in the 43-seat interview tent yesterday to talk about it.

Staring back at her were 39 empty white chairs.

Paul Rovnak, LPGA senior media relations coordinator, sat next to her on the platform to ask questions, and two staffers were the audience. Otherwise the room was devoid of reporters and cameras. Only later did a couple of international reporters wander in.

Even then, it is hard to imagine that's the kind of exposure the LPGA Tour was looking to get out of its second tournament and best field of the year. Or, that it wants one of its marquee players, three-time winner Ochoa, playing to such an empty room when she has so much to positively project for the tour.

Yet that is exactly what it came to yesterday because of an ill-advised media policy that has The Associated Press, The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin among the outlets that have either been denied credentials or returned them.

At issue is a new LPGA policy that would restrict news organizations' use of their own pictures and articles from LPGA Tour events far into the future.

A week after new LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens declared her tour is, "hot, has a wide variety of personalities who are not only great golfers but are pretty interesting people as well," it effectively removed much of the exposure for them and helped shift the focus elsewhere for a day.

The AP, alone, claims 6,700 newspaper, radio and television clients in the United States and 8,000 more in 121 other countries.

Al Abrams, media director of the Fields Open, said he was "disappointed" a solution to the stalemate hadn't been reached.

Indeed, this can't be what the title sponsor from Japan had in mind when it shelled out the speculated-upon $2.5 million to $3 million or so in fees to get the inaugural event. Here it has assembled a top-notch field and been prepared to run a first-class event only to have the LPGA's media policy hang over it like a dark cloud. It comes to Michelle Wie's backyard and then forgets why it came.

With the LPGA season starting a month after the PGA's and the women having so much to market with newcomers Morgan Pressel, Ai Miyazato and Wie, among others, you would have thought the issues that divide could have been disposed of early and common ground found. It is in everybody's interests. You would have hoped the LPGA would embrace the new season and the opportunities it presents.

Perhaps it thought it could pull a fast one out here in the Pacific, far from the beaten media path. If so, it didn't quite pull it off. And the timing for the grab couldn't have been a whole lot worse for an organization not exactly showered with limelight. With the PGA Tour, the Olympics and everything else that is going on, the LPGA really doesn't need to try to bury its tour in the rough before its season really gets started. Yet that is precisely where it is headed if someone in a position of authority doesn't get reacquainted with reason soon.

The LPGA can have a bright, exciting story to tell this year if only it doesn't get in the way of the message it should be sending.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.