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For every person who thinks the decision to postpone the Ryder Cup is a good one, there is another who believes the event should go ahead. Such differences of opinion will come to an abrupt halt if COVID-19 remains on the attack and the switch had to happen. But for the moment at least the arguments are in the ascendency.
Those who will be mighty relieved at a postponement include Nick Faldo (who let the cat out of the bag in his Sunday night commentary of 28 June as the Travelers Championship broadcast concluded), as well as Ryder Cup men such as Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka. They were dead against any playing-behind-closed-doors scenario, while Pádraig Harrington’s instincts were no different. Again, Sandy Lyle, a former Masters champion and a man of five Ryder Cups, could not begin to entertain the idea of a match without a crowd: “The corporate stuff, the crowds and the noise are so much a part of it.”
No one, perhaps, came to his need-to-switch-dates conclusion ahead of Sandy Jones, formerly the chief executive of the PGA in Europe and a man who played a pivotal role in the development of the Ryder Cup. He appreciated that television coverage of the crowd-free PGA tournaments of the moment have been getting a great reception but doubted it could ever be the same for a Ryder Cup.
“Fans,” he said, “put so much into golf – both financially and in terms of atmosphere – that it would be a travesty if they weren’t involved. Forget everything else and just look at what happens on the first tee. The atmosphere there is unique; it would be terrible to take it away.”
Jones went on to cite how the buildup to the match is always a vital part of the whole, with so much of it relating to who is and who isn’t about to play his way onto the European team. To him, that process was to be sorely diminished if, with the usual qualifying system set to be rudely interrupted, there would have been nothing beyond the short sharp shock attaching to Harrington naming his picks. (That, as everyone knows, was never what Harrington wanted.)
Mike Whan, who recognises that the Ryder Cup’s greater importance to the game overall has to allow it to take precedence, says of proximity of next year’s matches that the Solheim Cup is big enough to hold its own in such circumstances.
For a long time, stories have circulated that it is crucial to the European Tour’s financial well-being that they collect the loot detonated by its home match of 2022. However, though it is the PGA of America who call the shots for the United States’ upcoming home match, the US PGA Tour wanted ’22 for their postponed Presidents Cup and for the Ryder Cup in Italy to move to ’23, (The idea of back-to-back Ryder Cups in ’21 and ’22 was apparently mooted – and booted out.)
Plenty of European Solheim Cup women are miffed at the way things have turned out, especially when they had to play back-to-back Solheims in ’02 and ’03 in the wake of postponements caused by 9/11. On this occasion, it is about the men gate-crashing their 2021 Solheim Cup season (in Toledo, Ohio), and the situation set to be repeated when both matches are played in Europe in 2023. “We’ll end up having to move our years again,” said one prominent member of the team.
Mike Whan, who recognises that the Ryder Cup’s greater importance to the game overall has to allow it to take precedence, says of proximity of next year’s matches that the Solheim Cup is big enough to hold its own in such circumstances. The match is, indeed, coming on in leaps and bounds and, with Whan at the helm we can rest assured that he will find a way to make sure that the women shine.
Yet what happens in 2027 when a European-based Solheim Cup has to vie with a centenary Ryder Cup taking place at Adare Manor in Ireland? Felicity Johnson, a long-time member of the LET, is just one who cannot see that working. “The Solheim Cup has been getting bigger and bigger but it could only take a backward step if that were to happen. That whole year would be all about the Ryder Cup and nothing but the Ryder Cup.”
A European official who is held in high esteem (he prefers to remain anonymous) believes there is a way in which this unfortunate two-in-one-year arrangement could work to the women’s advantage. His suggestion is that they could switch to playing a bit earlier in the year – and leave the men to themselves in the autumn. And why not? After all, it is “only for old school and fuddy-duddy reasons” (his words) that these matches are held when they are. In truth, either party, or both parties, could adjust their dates.
Beth Allen, who was considered for the American Solheim Cup side of 2017, came up with a possible alternative. Namely, to play the contests in successive weeks on the same course as happened with the men’s and women’s US Opens at Pinehurst No. 2 in 2014. The aforementioned official said it would make a great statement, albeit one which would involve multiple challenges.
Allen, incidentally, is among those who were adamant that the Ryder Cup should have gone ahead this year if at all possible: “In the long history of the Ryder Cup, could it hurt to have had one match behind closed doors? Just think how interested people would have been to read about it a hundred years from now.”
Jamie Spence, who captained the UK’s winning team at the last Olympics, held the same view: “It would still have been a big thing on TV,” he said. “Also, when you consider the venue, the lack of spectators at Whistling Straits wouldn’t have been the concern it might be elsewhere. After all, there are holes where you can’t have fans on both sides of those fairways."
Dame Laura Davies contributed this to the debate. “It wouldn’t have worried me to have played a Solheim Cup behind closed doors. Fans are 100 percent of a Ryder Cup in normal times but these are not normal times. We should get on with things.”
So much to debate, but maybe officialdom and Ryder Cup players alike now will spare a moment to look at the bigger picture.