The Solheim Cup Deserves More Attention, Here's How They Can Get It
The Solheim Cup never gets a proper buildup, in part because the Ryder Cup overshadows it like Tiger Woods standing next to, well, anybody.
Which marketing genius decided to schedule this week’s Solheim Cup the week before the Clash of the Titans (Ryder Cup) in Italy?
What’s that? You didn’t know this was a Solheim Cup year? Yeah, what’s left of the mainstream media hasn’t exactly jumped on the coverage. But it has been all over details of the tiresome LIV Golf takeover.
Europe won the Solheim Cup in 2021 over the U.S., but the competition only had a fraction of the world's best players.
Raj Mehta/USA TODAY Sports
The Solheim Cup needs a different date (returning to even-numbered years next year is a start) and an upgrade. Here’s how The Ranking would do it, if you don’t mind a parable from a previous Ryder Cup to explain it …
It was 2010, I was sitting at my seat near the back of the Ryder Cup media center in Wales when I sensed a presence just to my left, standing on the other side of a low dividing wall opposite my desk.
I looked over and it was Tim Finchem, PGA Tour commissioner. He was in close proximity. Just my luck, he looked at me at the same time. It was awkward, we both knew it was awkward and we both knew we were thus forced to make awkward conversation. (Is there any other kind of conversation with a lawyer?)
Desperate to break the silence, I blurted out my idea of how to improve the Ryder Cup. Why that and why then? I don’t know. It came out of left field in my brain although I had suggested it several times in print over the previous decade.
Samuel Ryder, I told Finchem, would not leave out a whole portion world if he was starting the Ryder Cup today. Great Britain and Ireland and the U.S. were the main golfing countries in the 1920s, of course, but that was then. The whole planet plays golf now. Mr. Ryder’s fabulous seed company wouldn’t leave any of the world’s best players out of the competition he sponsored.
So, I proposed, what if the Ryder Cup, which pits the U.S. against Europe, merged with the PGA Tour’s Presidents Cup, which features the U.S. against the Internationals (the rest of the world)? The Presidents Cup winner would advance the following year to play the defending Ryder Cup champion the following year.
It’s a win-win, I added. The merger would give the second-fiddle Presidents Cup do-or-die status. You’ve got to win it or miss out on the next Ryder Cup. (Imagine the criticism a U.S. or European captain would get for losing a Presidents Cup and not getting a Ryder Cup berth for two more years? Yikes.)
Plus, taking the Ryder Cup global would result in a tripling, quadrupling—who knows?—of global rights fees. Imagine the first Ryder Cup with Korean and Japanese players. It would be like a Black Friday doorbuster sale. You saw the media frenzy when Ichiro Suzuki played for the Seattle Mariners in baseball. It was amazing.
The third-team ploy would mean any great player in the world would have a chance to compete in a Ryder Cup.
Finchem didn’t hesitate when I finished my speech. “I wouldn’t be opposed to that,” he said in his usual deadpan voice. I nearly fell off my chair in surprise.
His response makes sense because the Presidents Cup back then was still not getting great traction with the American public. It’s done better since. (Thank you, Tom Kim.) And it would mean more revenue for the PGA Tour. Finchem was always in favor of that.
Of course, the proposal assumes that the PGA of America would agree to cut the Tour in on the Ryder Cup, its golden goose of cash flow. (Yeah, that could be a problem …)
One minor adjustment would have to be made. The future Ryder Cup venues already scheduled would have to be scrapped. The matches would have to be played in a country that has a team teeing it up. You couldn’t have Europe versus the Internationals, say, at Medinah. So the defending champion is always going to have a home-course advantage. To the winners go the spoils.
Thirteen years after that not-so-fateful conversation, none of that has happened. The Presidents Cup has improved but it's still nowhere near Ryder Cup status.
Back to the Solheim Cup. It needs the same concept.
The U.S. versus Europe has had its thrilling moments, its controversies and its walk-off strokes of genius. But the women’s game has gone global far faster than the men’s game. Surely Solheim Cup benefactors/founders John and Louise Solheim would have included all of the world’s best players if they were creating the Cup today. Worse, the women don’t have a Presidents Cup surrogate so players from the rest of the world are excluded.
That included stars such as Australia’s Karrie Webb, Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, Taiwan's Yani Tseng, Thailand's Ariya Jutanagarn, Japan’s Ayako Okamoto; and current stars such as Canada’s Brooke Henderson and, well, many from South Korea.
The upcoming Ryder Cup features 22 of the world’s top 25-ranked players (17 of the top 25 in the SI World Golf Rankings). Maybe without LIV Golf, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau would have squeezed into the top 25, too. That’s a star-studded field.
The Solheim Cup features nine of the top 25 in the Rolex Rankings. Half of the ranking’s top 10 are ineligible—No. 1 Ruoning Yin, No. 4 Jin Young Ko, No. 6 Hyo-Joo Kim, No. 7 Minjee Lee and No. 9 Lydia Ko. Also missing are No. 11 Atthaya Thitikul, No. 12 Xiyu Lin and No. 13 Henderson.
This is like having baseball’s All-Star Game but only inviting the American League.
Even the seniors have figured this out with the World Champions Cup in December at The Concession Club in Florida. It will have three teams—Team USA, Team Europe and Team International (the artists once known as Rest of World). So a three-sided solution is not unprecedented.
The Solheim solution should be similar. Start another Solheim Cup-like event—call it the Ministers Cup—and add an International team from Asia (South Korea, Japan and China). That team would be loaded with talent, yes, and probably hard to beat. But South Korea and Japan are also loaded with potential rich sponsors.
The U.S. adds Canada, Mexico and South America to strengthen its lineup while Europe expands to include players from Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Throw in Greenland and Antarctica if you think that will help. Ministers Cup is played in the years the Solheim Cup isn’t. The Ministers winner advances to the Solheim Cup to play its defending champion.
No player in the world is left out of this format. Global rights revenue would skyrocket. The LPGA and Ladies European Tour would like that, wouldn’t they? Right now, how excited are the devoted women’s golf fans in Korea and Japan about watching the Americans and the Euros? Probably not very. But when their favorite players are included, it will blow up big.
Maybe the Asian squad becomes a dynasty. That’s all right. Dynasties make a better and more compelling narrative in any sport. See New York Yankees, Boston Celtics, Tiger Woods or Tom Brady, among others.
Maybe striving to beat a potential Asian dynasty would spur the Americans and Europeans to find better ways to develop more star players.
Including the rest of the world in the Solheim Cup would make it a bigger and better event, more equitable and profitable and generate much-needed interest. It would be a truly global event for the LPGA, which is a truly global tour.
What would John and Louise Solheim say about the proposal? We can only guess but it might sound familiar:
“We wouldn’t be opposed to that.”