No fans means no Ryder Cup
Seth Waugh knows how a Ryder Cup is supposed to look and how it should sound.
In his first week as CEO at the PGA of America, Waugh was in the 72-foot high grandstand behind the first tee at Le Golf National outside Paris. Flags were waving. Fans were singing. Players were trying to conceal their nerves. That’s what he expects for the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.
Next year.
The inevitable became reality Wednesday when Ryder Cup officials postponed the September matches until next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic that made it increasingly unlikely the loudest event in golf could have spectators.
“A Ryder Cup with no fans is not a Ryder Cup,” Waugh said.
The Ryder Cup was scheduled for Sept. 25-27 along the Lake Michigan shore. Because of a reconfigured schedule created by golf being shut down for three months, the matches would have been held one week after the U.S. Open.
Now, the Ryder Cup will move to Sept. 24-26, 2021, the second time in the last two decades it was postponed. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks led the 2001 matches to be postponed two weeks before they were set to be played.
Waugh, the former CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas, called it “the most complicated deal of my career” because of so many moving parts.
The decision means Europe’s next home Ryder Cup, set for Italy, has been pushed back until 2023. The European Tour thrives on Ryder Cup revenue.
And it affects the PGA Tour, which already has lost millions this year while trying to keep canceled tournaments solvent. The Presidents Cup in 2021 at Quail
Hollow in North Carolina was a sellout in corporate hospitality; it now gets pushed back a year.
Quail Hollow instead will host the Wells Fargo Championship next spring, and that event will move to the TPC Potomac in 2022 during the Presidents Cup year.
Among the issues caused by the pandemic was travel by European fans, who would have had to spend a month in quarantine — two weeks both coming and going — for three days of matches. The environment at the Ryder Cup is unlike any other in golf, with distinctive tones of cheering from Europeans and Americans, hour-by-hour tension over 28 matches from the opening tee shot Friday morning until the final putt Sunday afternoon.
“The Ryder Cup is uniquely about the fans,” Waugh said. “We didn’t want to build Lambeau Field, get hopes up and then have to cancel.”