Forget about an ace on a par 3. Blasi did one better.
Most golfers dream of scoring a hole-in-one on any par 3. Golf course designer Jay Blasi did one better.
Blasi, who serves on Golfweek’s Best architectural advisory panel and often hosts course-rating events, used driver to ace the short, downhill par-4 14th of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley Resort in Wisconsin.
The hole tips out at 325 yards. Blasi was playing the orange tees as he led a group of Golfweek’s Best raters around the David McLay Kidd-designed layout. He said it was playing 272 on a direct line at the flag. As seen in the video below, it took a few seconds to register. (Warning: Some language is as might be expected for such a surprise, and might be NSFW.)
“On a par 3, anytime you hit one towards the hole you have a sliver of hope it will go in,” Blasi told Golfweek. “On a drivable par 4, the hole becomes the green itself and you feel like you accomplished your goal if you knock it on. In this case it landed on the green in line with the flag, rolled at the hole and disappeared. The feeling was more shock and awe than pure joy for me. But for the group it was just bliss.”
Blasi didn’t immediately share details via text about what his bar tab might have been after buying a round for the house to celebrate, but the Golfweek’s Best raters can be a thirsty bunch with high standards.
The hole curves sharply downhill with a feeder slope coming in from the right on a typically firm fairway, allowing players to send the ball out wide of multiple centerline bunkers and still feed it onto the green. It’s not exactly a monster so long as players miss the sand, but still, a hole-in-one? Pretty cool and totally unforgettable for Blasi on a course that ranks No. 3 among all public-access layouts in the state and is No. 36 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of all modern courses in the U.S.
No. 14 of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Brandon Carter/Sand Valley)
The Wisconsin-raised, California-based Blasi sports a 2.9 handicap index and previously had made four holes-in-one on par 3s at a strong lineup of courses: The Patriot in Oklahoma (after having helped design the course, he made the first ace on opening day), Stanford Golf Course in California, Pasatiempo in California and Omni PGA Frisco’s short course named the Swing (of course we count them on par-3 courses!) in Texas.
The latest ace comes on the heels of Blasi complaining to this writer about the state of his game. Might that have anything to do with the fact we’re opposing captains in the Ryder Cup-style, Golfweek’s Best rater-based Scratch Cup in October? After the hole-in-one, this writer and his team are accepting thoughts and prayers.
Thousands of fans were stuck in a Jiffy Lube Live parking lot for hours waiting for a ride.
GAINESVILLE, Va. – The first-tee experience at a Solheim Cup is arguably the best in women’s golf, particularly on Friday morning. The 19th staging of the biennial event has been touted as the biggest ever based on advanced ticket sales.
So to see empty chairs on the first tee in a grandstand that seats 2,000 early Friday morning was more than shocking. Turns out most of the fans – thousands – have been stuck in a Jiffy Lube Live parking lot for hours waiting on shuttle buses to arrive.
Fans tweeted video of outrageously long lines, reporting that they’d been waiting for hours, mostly in a standstill. This comes one day after fans waited hours to leave the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club after Thursday’s opening ceremony.
When Lexi Thompson came on the first tee to rev up the fans Friday morning, there were entire sections of the grandstands completely empty. By the time the final group teed off at 7:41 a.m., there were still a number of empty seats.
“Been here more than an hour and nowhere near the front of the line,” tweeted Alan Fisher. “People are leaving and going home, worried about the trip. Some kids in tears. Not enough security checkpoints not enough buses.”
One fan even noted that the porta potties in the parking lot were closed. Some fans on twitter called for a refund.
As the biggest stars in golf got their foursomes matches underway, LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan stood off to the side of the first tee huddled with several top tour officials. When asked for a statement on the transportation issues that had not improved after several hours, a tour spokesperson said they’re working on it.
“We gotta fill this thing up a little bit more,” U.S. captain Stacy Lewis told Golf Channel’s Amy Rogers on the first tee.
The Solheim Cup is the crown jewel of the women’s game, the best chance to reel in fans who don’t normally follow the tour but are drawn in by the passion and patriotic fervor.
Buck revealed that they were in Mexico in July and decided to play golf.
Thanks to an Adam Schefter injury report on fellow ESPN reporter Michelle Beisner-Buck, her husband Joe Buck decided to take to X (formerly Twitter) to break down how he accidentally broke his wife’s ankle with a golf shot.
Joe revealed that he and Beisner-Buck were in Mexico back in July and decided to play golf. She ended up doing a headstand near the tee box on the course for good luck, and when he teed off, she did a split.
You can guess what happened next. He hit a drive into her ankle and “shattered it,” per Joe. There was “severe” nerve damage, too.
She got surgery, but didn’t blame him. Watch them retell the tale:
Here’s the truth @AdamSchefter the whole truth and nothing but the guilt-ridden brutal truth! My wife is one amazing, tough woman. And she has not for one second pinned this on me. Or added to my mental load. While I have. Fluke stuff. Probably lucky it wasn’t worse! pic.twitter.com/1SCEhJv3t7
Koivun shot 9-under par over the course of three days at the Inverness Intercollegiate in Ohio.
Following an extremely impressive freshman campaign in which he led Auburn golf to a national championship, sophomore Tiger Jackson Koivun flashed his dominance again, taking home the individual victory in his first tournament of the season on Tuesday.
Koivun shot 9-under par over the course of three days at the Inverness Intercollegiate in Ohio, including a 6-under par 63 in the opening round. Koivin’s dominance helped propel his team to a second place (+2) finish in the team portion of the tournament, behind only No. 6 Virginia (-2) in the field. The second place finish ended Auburn’s historic streak of seven-straight tournament wins to end last season.
Unfortunately for Auburn, the team loss will likely drop the defending champions from their current No. 1 ranking. Still, Koivun’s dominant outing shows he can carry this Tiger team to at least another opportunity at defending its 2023-2024 National Championship.
Koivun and teammates Brendan Valde, Josiah Gilbert, Carson Bacha, and Reed Lotter will look to start a new first-place streak when they travel to Texas to take part in the Valero Texas Collegiate next Saturday.
As for the star sophomore, Koivun now has 3 individual wins under his belt and should finish with many more by the end of his second collegiate campaign.
Contact/Follow us @TheAuburnWire on X (Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Auburn news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Brian on Twitter @TheRealBHauch
Professional golf and top-ranked courses don’t always coincide as well as this week at Royal County Down.
Truly great courses and professional golf rarely collide, but this week is a welcome exception.
Royal County Down’s Championship Links, site of the Amgen Irish Open beginning Thursday on the DP World Tour, has a rare distinction: it’s one of only two courses to be ranked No. 1 on one of Golfweek’s Best premium rankings of courses to have hosted an upper-level men’s tour event in decades. The layout in Newcastle, Northern Ireland, ranks No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best list of courses outside the U.S.
Royal County Down originally was designed as a nine-hole layout by George L. Baillie in 1889. Nine more holes were laid down among the sandy dunes as designed by none other than Old Tom Morris over the following years. The course has evolved over the decades with contributions by George Combe, Harry Colt and Donald Steel, among others making suggestions.
The ninth green at Royal County Down in the lead-up to Amgen Irish Open 2024 in Newcastle, Northern Ireland (Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
Royal County Down has hosted a slew of top-level events including three previous Irish Opens, most recently in 2015. It also has been the site of various British Amateur Championships, Senior British Opens, a Curtis Cup, a Walker Cup, the British Ladies Amateur six times, and the European Ladies’ Team Championship.
Not counting our wide-ranging state-by-state rankings of public and private courses, the only other No. 1 on one of our premium lists to host a top-tier event has been Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, site of six U.S. Opens, one PGA Championship, one U.S. Women’s Open and multiple U.S. Amateurs and U.S. Women’s Amateurs. Also the annual host of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the famed layout is No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of resort courses in the U.S.
By comparison, the private Cypress Point in California took over the No. 1 spot this year on Golfweek’s Best ranking of classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S., but the PGA Tour hasn’t been back since 1990. Before Cypress Point took over the top spot this year, Pine Valley in New Jersey had enjoyed a long run in the No. 1 spot, but that private stalwart never has hosted a PGA Tour event. That leaves Augusta National, ranked No. 3 among American classics and home to the Masters, as the highest-ranked classic course in the U.S. to have hosted a top-level men’s event in recent memory.
Among modern courses built since 1960 in the U.S., none of the top seven layouts have hosted a PGA Tour event. The Straits Course at Kohler’s Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, tied for No. 8 on that list, is the highest-ranked modern course to have welcomed top-level men’s events, including three PGA Championships, a U.S. Senior Open and a Ryder Cup.
Cathy, who’d been doused with fuel, was on fire from the waist up.
GAINESVILLE, Va. — After the second round of the 1992 Sara Lee Classic, Jim and Cathy Gerring talked about a terrific shot she’d hit on her 17th hole Saturday afternoon at Hermitage Golf Course in Old Hickory, Tennessee. She’d come out of a 3-iron, and the ball had dribbled down into the water. Gerring took off a shoe and sock and hit it from the hazard to 2 inches.
“We were laughing about how lucky I was,” she recalled.
Cathy wanted to go hit balls. Jim, the head pro at Muirfield Village, wanted to eat. The players had gotten little notes from the tour, as they often did, asking them to visit the hospitality tent to thank the sponsors. Cathy had just sat down with her plate of food when Jim started raving about the chicken. She went back to the buffet line, where the chef told her that his burner had just gone out and that it would be a minute. A 30-year-old Cathy leaned up against the table to wait.
As a catering employee began to refill the burner with denatured alcohol, he realized that the flame had not gone out. There was an explosion and Cathy, who’d been doused with fuel, was on fire from the waist up.
“You know you hear that stop, drop and roll,” she recalled. “My face was – I could hear it sizzling. … I just ran.”
Jim shot up from his chair and ran after her, pulling off a tablecloth and smothering Cathy as he tackled her to the ground. She turned over and saw the skin dripping from her hands and face. As everyone in the room stood there frozen in shock, it was Cathy who yelled out, “Somebody call 9-1-1!”
Cathy was at the peak of her career when the unthinkable happened. Two years prior, she’d won three times on the LPGA and earned a spot on the inaugural Solheim Cup team. The 1990 Solheim Cup was a who’s who list of American superstars who combined to win 214 LPGA titles and 24 majors. The dream team included Nancy Lopez, Pat Bradley, Patty Sheehan, Beth Daniel, Betsy King, Dottie Pepper, Rosie Jones and Gerring, whose name might be the only one among the eight that modern fans don’t recognize.
As the EMS worker screamed for a MedEvac flight, Gerring thought she might not survive. She asked her husband to take good care of their 3-year-old son, Zach.
“I was standing on the 10th tee when they air-vac’d her out,” said Pepper, Gerring’s close friend and Solheim Cup partner. “They stopped play.”
The nurse in the helicopter told Gerring that she couldn’t give her any pain medication because her throat was swelling shut from ingesting the alcohol. When she landed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, there was a line of medical staff pouring saline on her hands and face every 5 feet.
“I knew my career was over,” said Gerring, “there was just no way. I had five layers of skin burned off both hands. They did skin grafts. I knew I would never have the same pair of hands.”
American golfers Dottie Mochrie (later Dottie Pepper, left) and Cathy Gerring competing in the Solheim Cup tournament at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, Orlando, Florida, USA, 16th-18th November 1990. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)
Inkster, who often stayed with the Gerrings in Ohio when it was too much to get back to California, went to the hospital after her round.
“Her head was the size of a basketball,” recalled Inkster. “She lost all her eyebrows. It was just such a fluke accident. Everybody has been through a buffet with those things and for it to just blow up in her face.”
Gerring’s mother had taken Zach to Opryland that day. When the mother of six arrived at the hospital, nothing could prepare her for what she saw.
“I will never ever forget the look on my mom’s face when she came into that room,” said Cathy.
It was even harder on her father, Bill Kratzert, the longtime head pro at Fort Wayne Country Club — who’d taught the game to her and older brother Billy, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour. After Bill finished up work Saturday night, he drove to Nashville only to walk out the room in a matter of seconds after taking one look at his daughter.
Bill drove home.
“He couldn’t handle it,” said Cathy.
Laying there in the hospital suffering from immense pain, Cathy often found herself grappling with tough questions.
What did I do for God to allow this to happen to me? Am I being punished? Did I waste the talent that he gave me? Did I not do my best?
She was eventually transferred back home to Ohio, where her primary doctor, who happened to work with the Ohio State athletic department and lived on the first hole at Muirfield, told her that the sooner she could let go of the bitterness, the better.
Cathy took that message to heart and sought the help of a therapist.
“The reality is, accidents happen,” she said. “I could either accept it, or go into a place that was not going to be healthy. I know for certain that having Zach saved me … I had Zach to live for.”
Golf: Solheim Cup: Portrait of Team USA (top row, L-R:) Dottie Pepper, Patty Sheehan, Cathy Gerring, Nancy Lopez, and captain Kathy Whitworth, and (bottom row, L-R:) Betsy King, Pat Bradley, Beth Daniel, and Rosie Jones posing for team photo during ceremony before Friday Foursomes at Lake Nona Lake Nona G&CC.
Jim first met Cathy on the golf course and was struck by her competitive fire. He recalled Jack Grout, the legendary teacher of Jack Nicklaus, once saying he’d never met anyone with a greater intensity and desire to win.
“He was quite fond of Cathy,” said Jim. “They had many conversations about what he called championship golf.”
At that first Solheim Cup, Cathy was the only player on the team with a toddler, and Jim looked after Zach while she worked inside the ropes. Jim recalled going fishing at Lake Nona early in the week, and just as he’d hooked a nice-sized bass, young Zach began to scream after stepping into some fire ants. A panicked Jim took him over to Cathy, who stopped her practice round to get the medic involved, followed by some ice cream.
The reason Jim came down to Old Hickory for the Sara Lee that week was so the couple could try for a second child. The timing was right.
Cathy, a strong ball-striker with an enviable short game, could’ve driven herself insane asking all the what-if questions. On top of all that physical pain, the couple suffered more heartache with four miscarriages. The doctors told Cathy the difficulty was likely due to the accident, only to eventually discover that she didn’t have enough progesterone. She gave birth to a second child, son Jayme, in 1994.
Cathy didn’t even watch the 1992 Solheim Cup. Her first rounds of golf came several years later after the accident with Inkster and her husband Brian at Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. She wore special compression gloves to try to keep the swelling down.
“I was burned past where your sweat glands are,” she explained, “so when the humidity was high, my hands would swell, and I felt like the Michelin man trying to hold a golf club.
“I was never going to have that same pair of hands to play golf.”
Cathy Gerring clips her ball during the 2000 Du Maurier Classic at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club in Alymer, Quebec, Canada. Mandatory Credit: Harry How /Allsport
Cathy settled a $25 million lawsuit against the catering company out of court for an undisclosed amount, her career cut agonizingly short. For two years, Inkster called her every day to check in. Gerring tried to give the tour a second go, but mostly lived vicariously through Inkster’s Hall of Fame career.
A couple months back, Gerring was going through her Solheim Cup travel bag from 34 years ago and found a rules sheet and a pin sheet from Lake Nona folded up in the front pocket. What she also found was an old report card of Zach’s that he’d apparently in stuffed in there to hide from mom.
Zach, now 36, graduated from college magna cum laude with a degree in psychology and works as a registered nurse. Back then, however, he wasn’t too big on school, and that report card showed an “A” in P.E. and “D’s” and “F’s” in everything else.
Gerring got such a kick out of the discovery that she framed the report card.
“I’ve got three big trophies,” she said, “a husband and two children.”
The idea of staging a female version of the Ryder Cup originally came from the late Joe Flanagan.
GAINESVILLE, Va. — The great Kathy Whitworth’s pairing philosophy for the inaugural Solheim Cup in 1990 was to partner players with similar personalities. That made the bulldog duo of Dottie Pepper and Cathy Gerring a no-brainer.
Leading up to the first day of competition, the two close friends decided that Gerring would tee off on the first hole at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. Pepper had the even holes.
“She had ripped into me every day of the practice rounds, saying ‘If you leave a putt short, I’m going to kick your ass. If you lay up and you just don’t have the guts to go for it, I’m going to kick your ass,’ ” recalled Pepper with a laugh.
But on the way to the first tee for Day 1 Foursomes, the spirited Gerring looked over at Pepper with an ash grey face.
“Pards, I can’t do it,” Gerring said.
“Can’t do what?” Pepper asked.
“I can’t hit the first tee shot,” replied Gerring, who felt like she was hyperventilating.
Gerring had won three times that season on the LPGA, and she wasn’t alone when it came to the terror of the first tee.
Future LPGA Hall of Fame member Patty Sheehan had a similar talk with Rosie Jones 34 years ago.
“She and I were walking to the first tee, and I just turned to her and said, ‘Well, Rosie, you’re going to hit the first tee shot,’ ” recalled Sheehan. “She’s like, ‘Oh man, partner, really?’ I said ‘Yeah, I can’t even breathe right now.’ ”
England’s Laura Davies, who was in the first match out that Friday, was standing on the first tee with Pat Bradley when she turned to countrywoman Alison Nicholas and said, “God, I’m a bit nervous.
“Well don’t turn around now,” Nicholas advised. “Nancy Lopez is walking onto the tee.”
The way Davies remembers it, she made Nicholas hit that first tee shot. Except that’s not what happened. Davies – using a pastel pink wood – hit the first shot for Team Europe, though she apparently has blacked it out.
As for who struck the first shot in Solheim Cup history, that honor goes to Bradley, who hit a beauty down the middle for the Americans. Bradley’s partner, Lopez, has long regretted that she turned down the chance.
“To think that Nancy Lopez passed on history,” marveled Bradley, “and she has not forgotten it.”
Portrait of Team USA (top row, L-R:) Dottie Mochrie, Patty Sheehan, Cathy Gerring, Nancy Lopez, and captain Kathy Whitworth, and (bottom row, L-R:) Betsy King, Pat Bradley, Beth Daniel, and Rosie Jones posing for team photo during ceremony (Photo by Jacqueline Duvoisin /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
NASA launched a shuttle during the prelude to the Solheim Cup at nearby Cape Canaveral, and the players all scurried outside during dinner to see it. No one could’ve known at the time just how perfectly that scene encapsulated what was to come.
The 19th Solheim Cup will be held Sept. 13-15 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia. While Team USA boasts the top two players in the world in Nelly Korda and Lilia Vu, Europe has won the last three contests dating to 2017. The U.S. still leads the overall series 10-7-1, with the event’s first tie coming last year in Spain.
For U.S. captain Stacy Lewis, it’s important that her players understand and appreciate the history of the Solheim Cup. Ten past captains are coming to Virginia, many of whom were on that inaugural U.S. team.
For England’s Trish Johnson, the success of the Solheim is due in large part to the stars who made up those first two teams.
“It was just the best of the best, probably ever, for both tours,” said Johnson of golf’s Dream Teams. “That’s what made it so exceptional. They paved the way. It’s not just about the play. It’s about the people … they probably care more than the players themselves now.”
The 1990 European Solheim Cup team: (back row) Trish Johnson, Helen Alfredsson, Mickey Walker, Laura Davies, Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (front row) Liselotte Neumann, Pam Wright, Dale Reid and Alison Nicholas (courtesy LPGA)
Player strategy wasn’t the only thing thrown together for that inaugural Solheim, which was announced in August at the JAL Big Apple Classic in New York and scheduled for mid-November. Mike Milthorpe, an LPGA rules official, was approached in July of 1990 about running the event. Milthorpe called Kerry Haigh, a former LPGA rules official who had since moved on to the PGA of America and was involved in preparations for the 1991 Ryder Cup.
“I asked if they had a template of what the hell you do,” said Milthorpe. “We had 90 days.”
The idea of staging a female version of the Ryder Cup originally came from the late Joe Flanagan, head of what was then the Women Professional Golfers’ European Tour. LPGA commissioner Bill Blue latched onto it and approached Karsten and Louise Solheim, founders of Ping, as a potential sponsor during the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida, in January of 1990. The Solheims were already heavily involved in the LPGA, co-sponsoring four events around that time and working with numerous players.
At their next meeting, the LPGA proposed a two-event commitment, one in the U.S. and one in Europe. This time Karsten’s son John, who became CEO in 1995 and stepped down in 2022, was in attendance.
“If we do two events, they’ll sell it on us and be gone,” John told his father.
When mom Louise joined the conversation, she suggested they commit to 10 events. A draft of the agreement was put together in the ladies’ card room at Wykagyl Country Club in New York and finalized not long after. Blue, who was actually fired before the first Solheim took place, did not attend the event at Lake Nona.
Founder of the Solheim Cup and golf club designer Karsten Solheim presents Kathy Whitworth, Team Captain for the United States with the Waterford Crystal Solheim Trophy after Team USA defeated Europe in the inaugural Solheim Cup competition golf tournament on 18th November 1990 at the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in Orlando, Florida, United States. (Photo by David Cannon/Allsport/Getty Images)
The Solheims gave the LPGA three options on what to name it: the Ping Cup, the Karsten Cup and the Solheim Cup.
“We knew they wouldn’t take Ping,” said John. “It wasn’t likely that they’d take Karsten. We figured it would end up Solheim.”
Pepper first heard about the Solheim Cup at a mandatory players’ meeting at the McDonald’s LPGA Championship in June.
“Points have already started to accrue,” she recalled, “so your first thought is where the hell do I stand?”
The first Solheim Cup teams only had eight players. (It increased to 10 in 1992 and 12 in 1996.) Team USA used the top seven from the money list and one captain’s pick. Kathy Whitworth, the winningest player in all of golf with 88 titles, was selected captain.
“Everybody knew that Lopez was going to be the pick,” said Pepper, who locked up the last qualifying spot, edging out Danielle Ammaccapane.
Five of team USA’s eight members went on to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame (Beth Daniel, Betsy King, Lopez, Bradley and Sheehan). Together, the great eight won 214 LPGA titles, including 24 majors.
European captain Mickey Walker recalled King saying on the record she expected the Americans to win all 16 points.
“I didn’t even know some of them,” recalled King. “I didn’t think there would be any chance in the world that we could lose.”
American golfer Dottie Mochrie competing in the Solheim Cup tournament at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, Orlando, Florida, USA, 16th-18th November 1990. (Photo by Stephen Munday/Getty Images)
Whitworth paired King with her former Furman teammate, Beth Daniel, who won seven times that season on the LPGA and Player of the Year honors. King, the 1989 POY, had won six times the year prior. It’s no wonder the Euros nicknamed them “God and God.”
“I know everybody talks about the first one as basically an exhibition,” said Daniel, “but I have to tell you that our team took it very seriously.”
Pepper bristles at the mere mention of the word “exhibition.”
“Hell no, my God,” she said of such an implication. “Not in any way.”
With 1988 U.S. Women’s Open champion Liselotte Neumann of Sweden and 1989 LPGA Rookie of the Year Pam Wright of Scotland competing full-time in the U.S., the Europeans took two players off the LPGA money list, five from the European Order of Merit and had one wild card pick to form their first team. The pick went to Dame Laura Davies, who’d won the 1987 U.S. Women’s Open as a non-member.
The late Dale Reid of Scotland and France’s Marie-Laure de Lorenzi, who combined for 40 titles on the LET, rounded out the team along with Helen Alfredsson, who’d recently given up a career as a model.
(In time, Davies, Reid, de Lorenzi and Johnson would become the four winningest players in LET history.)
The British-owned Lake Nona was mostly unknown at the time, situated on a two-lane road with only a 7-11 nearby. Before Chris Higgs, now a VP at Octagon, became the LPGA’s Chief Operating Officer, he worked for Executive Sports International as a tournament operator. Milthorpe called up his longtime friend and said something along the lines of “Hey, we’ve got a new event, it’s like the Ryder Cup, but it’s in 11 weeks’ time.”
“That’s very funny,” Higgs replied.
Except it was no joke. And once Higgs found Lake Nona on a map, the LPGA and ESI set out to lay the foundation of what would grow to become one of the largest women’s sports events in the world, and a financial cornerstone of both growing tours.
Tina Barnes-Budd began her decades-long career at the LPGA in January of 1990 as a promotions assistant and among her tasks for the Solheim Cup was outfitting Team USA. Izod was the official apparel partner for uniforms, but the turnaround was too short to create something special.
“We looked at their line,” recalled Barnes-Budd, “and the closest thing we could get to red, white and blue was purple, navy and gold.”
For the opening ceremony outfits, JCPenney CEO Bill Howell told Barnes-Budd to go to the local store in Daytona Beach, Florida, and pick out what she wanted, and they’d ship it.
Barnes-Budd selected navy pleated skirts, navy blazers and red silk shirts along with 10 pairs of navy panty hose and 10 pairs of navy pumps.
A general view of opening ceremony during the Solheim Cup in 1990 at the Lake Nona Golf Club in Florida, USA. (Photo By Stephen Munday/Getty Images)
The Spruce Creek High School band from Port Orange, Florida, performed at the open ceremony, which was closed to fans.
The opening gala was held at sparkling new Universal Studios, which first opened its doors in June. It was a black tie and tennis shoes affair because dinner was on the cobble-stoned streets of a New York City set. Sections of the park were closed so that players had the rides to themselves.
“I remember they had a guy who would train the animals for films,” said Walker. “He got Nancy of course, as you would, and worked with this parrot to get things off Nancy’s body.”
Lopez doesn’t remember the parrot, but she does remember what it felt like for tour rivals to come together that week.
“Players at that time,” said Lopez, “we were all kind of loners.”
While fiery and animated inside the ropes, Sheehan didn’t feel so comfortable at places like cocktail parties.
“I was so shy and not outgoing at all,” said Sheehan, “and I didn’t try to make friends.”
But at the first Solheim Cup, Sheehan looked around the room at players she’d long admired and the idea of dying over every last putt for each one of them sounded really cool.
“I think it really helped change me and helped me understand my position on tour as being one of the better players,” said Sheehan, who’d already competed on the LPGA for a decade at this point and won 25 times.
Alfredsson turned professional in 1989 after playing collegiately in the U.S. but was disqualified from the final stage of LPGA Q-School because she missed the sign-up deadline. The colorful Swede went back to Europe, where she won the 1990 Weetabix British Open in the month leading up to the Solheim.
She paired with Reid over the first two days at Lake Nona and mostly remembers being scared inside the ropes.
“I just felt like I didn’t want to be in their way,” said Alfredsson. “I kind of walked in the edges of the rough. I was almost embarrassed because they had to play with us.”
Pat Bradley and Nancy Lopez of the USA converse during the Solheim Cup in 1990 at the Lake Nona Golf Club in Florida, USA. (Photo By David Cannon/Getty Images)
The tournament hustled to find 100 volunteers who were bused over from Daytona Beach. (For reference, 1,600 volunteers will work this year’s Solheim.) There was very little money for publicity, and while the event was not televised, the Solheims paid for a one-hour highlights show to be produced as well as hourly updates on CNN.
As for fans, Milthorpe estimates there may have been 1,000 people over the course of three days. The tournament sent out 750 specially embroidered pouches to guests of the Solheims that included a pair of tickets and a personal letter from Karsten.
If anything, it almost felt like the Europeans had an advantage when it came to atmosphere as the British-owned Nona attracted a number of fans for the foreign team.
“I always kind of joke that our best friends and family were there,” said Lopez, though sparse crowds did nothing to take away from the pressure players felt.
“I’m pretty sure that every single player in that locker room felt like if we were to lose, it would really be an embarrassment,” said Sheehan.
Pepper never forgot Whitworth telling the team that though the Europeans were heavy underdogs to “expect people to do things they’ve never done against you.”
While the first match of the first Solheim Cup actually went to Europe, with Davies and Nicholas defeating Lopez and Bradley, 2 and 1, there wasn’t much on blue on the board over the course of the event. With only one session each day, a team needed to get to 8 ½ points to win the Cup.
“It was a total annihilation,” said Johnson, “apart from a few players.”
Johnson lost her singles match, 8 and 7, against Bradley in an hour and a half after the American played the first 11 holes in 8 under.
“I always remember thinking she wouldn’t have done that against someone better,” Johnson said. “She’s looking at me thinking, ‘Well, who are you?’ … She wouldn’t have done that against Laura.”
Gerring went up to Whitworth at the player meeting on Saturday night and asked whether she could go off first.
“I said I’ve got a 2-year-old and I’m up at 6 a.m.,” said Gerring. “I’m already up, I’m already nervous. The less time I have to pass, the better.”
Whitworth honored the request, and Gerring dispensed of Alfredsson, 4 and 3.
“I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t playing Laura Davies,” Gerring admits. “Not disrespecting Alfie … I was not familiar with her.”
Reid was the only player who earned a full point in singles, defeating Sheehan, 2 and 1. It looked liked Wright might add a second point after King started pulling shots left down the stretch. Theirs was the only match all week to get to the 18th, and there was a gasp from the gallery after King sent her second shot screaming toward the water.
King took her visor off and kicked it all the way down the fairway, only to discover that a skinny palm tree had put her ball back in play.
“That was not the reaction you’d expect from Betsy King,” said Wright, “that was not the way she behaved.”
After the match was halved, King threw both their balls into the nearby lake.
The victorious USA team with the Solheim family after the Solheim Cup in 1990 at the Lake Nona Golf Club in Florida, USA. (Photo By Stephen Munday/Getty Images)
The final tally was as lopsided as expected, with the U.S. winning 11 ½ to 4 ½. There were concerns that continued domination would keep the event from taking flight, but those fears quickly subsided when Europe shocked all of golf at Dalmahoy Country Club in Scotland two years later, trouncing Team USA by five points.
The Solheim Cup had entered another stratosphere.
At the Greenbrier in 1994, fans lined the fairways from tee to green. Higgs, who at this point was hired to run the Cup, said for three competition days at the Greenbrier, there were 22,000 fans.
At the 2021 Solheim Cup at the Inverness Club in Ohio, officials reported 130,000 attendees across all activities both on and off the course for the week. Ticket revenue for 2024 has already significantly exceeded that of the 2021 event.
At the Greenbrier, Karsten wanted to make certain the event was broadcast on network television. The Solheims bought the air time, and then sold it to additional advertisers. This year’s event will be broadcast on NBC for three hours each day over the weekend.
“We’re extremely proud of the event,” said John, who created the Ping Junior Solheim Cup in 2002. “It’s part of us.”
The iconic Solheim Cup trophy was made by Waterford Crystal and members of the inaugural teams and captains received a smaller replica. Players were told Waterford broke the mold after making those replicas.
“Laura Davies said if her house ever caught on fire, that would be the only thing she’d try to save,” said Daniel, who didn’t want to reveal where she keeps hers.
Pepper actually had her replica appraised several years ago on the television program “Antiques Roadshow” and was told by the host that she’d insure it for $35,000.
When Gerring’s family basement flooded some time ago, her first thought was “Oh my God, my Solheim Cup bag.”
Fortunately, the bag stayed dry in the wine room with the trophy still in its original box. As she and husband Jim prepared to downsize, Gerring took stock of her trophies and memorabilia and shared the list with her two children.
“The only trophy they both want is the Solheim Cup,” she said.
A priceless piece of family history.
(Editor’s note: This story has corrected the name of Tina Barnes-Budd.)
Tennessee redshirt junior finishes tied for third in season-opening tournament.
Tennessee redshirt junior golfer Lance Simpson finished tied for third in the Visit Knoxville Collegiate. The three-day event concluded Sunday at Tennessee National Golf Club in Loudon, Tennessee.
Tennessee also finished third in team standings. Tennessee (-4) and South Carolina finished behind LSU (-23) and Ole Miss (-21).
Simpson finished at -6 as he shot 204 over three rounds. Freshman Jackson Herrington finished in an eighth-place tie (-4). Pearce Lewin, making his debut for the Vols, finished tied for 25th (+1), competing as an individual. Bruce Murphy and Evan Woosley-Reed tied for 33rd (+4), while Josh Hill (+8) finished tied for 57th and rounded out Tennessee’s team scoring.
Other Vols’ individuals who competed in the tournament included: Laurent Desmarchais, who also finished tied for 57th; Christian Pardue (+11); Jean-Philippe Parr (+12) and Kai Komulainen (+19).
Riegel had previously been an assistant pro at Aronimink, Wilmington Country Club and Gulph Mills.
The family of a Pennsylvania golf teaching professional who died when a tree fell onto a cart barn at the club where he worked received a $9.1 million settlement.
Justin Riegel was working as the director of golf at Philmont Country Club in the north suburbs of Philadelphia when a storm rolled in and he took cover in the barn.
Riegel’s son was born just weeks after his death and his widow, Kate Hannon, sued the course and the management companies involved and was awarded the sum.
Two key points of contention in the trial were the sequence of events that led Riegel to be at the cart barn at the moment he was killed on June 3, 2020, and whether the golf club could be held liable as his employer.
A storm was moving toward Huntingdon Valley, and Philmont suspended golf play midmorning. Riegel, who was 38 at the time, helped clearing carts off the course, according to legal filings by his estate’s lawyers, and was struck by the tree when parking a cart in the barn. Had the course been cleared earlier, Riegel wouldn’t have been in danger, they argued.
“Concert Golf didn’t create the storm,” said David Kwass, a partner with Saltz, Mongeluzzi, and Bendesky, who represented Riegel’s estate. “But they could have known about it earlier and they could have prepared for it.”
The club’s lawyers insisted that Riegel was in the barn to simply watch the storm with a colleague, but the jury found otherwise.
The jury determined that Philmont could have done more to prepare for the storm, and that the entity could be sued in Riegel’s death.
After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about one day, Kwass said. On Aug. 29, they reached a verdict finding all three defendants equally responsible for Riegel’s death and awarded his son $9.1 million.
Because the parties entered an agreement that guaranteed monetary compensation regardless of the verdict and limited the amount the verdict could reach, the jury’s decision can’t be appealed.
Cabot proposal to expand Citrus Farms meets significant statewide headwinds.
One of golf’s fastest-growing course developers and owners, Canadian-based Cabot, has found itself in conflict with various environmentalists in Florida.
At stake for the developer is the possible addition of new golf holes at Cabot Citrus Farms north of Tampa. Cabot has proposed swapping 324 acres of the Withlacoochee State Forest land adjacent to the resort in exchange for 800-plus acres of Cabot-supplied timberland several counties north.
But aside from the change in usage and status for the small sandy forest adjacent to Citrus Farms, Cabot’s plan runs counter to the interests of multiple organizations and many individuals who argue that such a deal might be the top of a slippery slope on which more public land would lose protections.
This debate comes on the heels of even greater recent friction between environmental concerns and golf development, heated by a secretive but since-scrapped proposal to build golf courses in a Florida State Park in southeast Florida. Judging by public commentary on social media and in newspaper editorials, the debate about converting public land into golf holes isn’t over.
The Withlacoochee State Forest website describes the breadth of the activities available, including biking, hiking, fishing, boating and much more in a publicly owned amenity that stretches across five counties.
Cabot bought the former World Woods Golf Club in 2022 and quickly set about renovating its two existing courses. With the resort now branded Citrus Farms, architect Kyle Franz has completed the 18-hole, full-sized Karoo course, which has opened while work continues on the second main 18. Citrus Farms also includes two new short courses, and the resort will include homes and upscale cabins that will be part of a rental pool. If the land swap is approved, more golf could be built.
Citrus Farms sits on rolling, sandy terrain near Brooksville, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. On the resort’s western flank sits the 324 acres of land owned by the Florida Forest Service that is part of the Withlacoochee State Forest, which includes multiple tracts and distinct environments among its total 164,073 acres stretched across five counties. The plot of protected land that Cabot desires is less than a mile wide, with the four-lane Suncoast Parkway directly on its opposite flank.
Cabot has proposed trading for that land, offering the state a much larger parcel in Levy County some 60 miles to the north.
“We pursued whether there was a chance to come up with a win-win, which would be the state getting greater land of significantly greater acreage and preservation value in return for land on which we could build additional golf to the west of Citrus Farms,” said Ben Cowan-Dewar, the Canadian co-founder and CEO of Cabot.
“What we proposed is something we have done in Cape Breton (in Nova Scotia), a property swap to be able to build more golf which will create more economic development, more jobs and a more attractive destination,” said Cowan-Dewar, who estimates Citrus Farms could eventually provide as many as 500 jobs in largely rural Hernando County. “And in return, we give something to the state that I think they feel is of real value to them. That process is one we had done in Nova Scotia with great success.”
The land swap would be unusual in Florida, where state-owned conservation lands have traditionally been granted much greater protection. Opposition to the proposal has been ramping up, including from organizations that monitor Florida’s land and wildlife.
“The underlying thing is the precedent that this would create, the idea that anywhere in the state of Florida you could have a developer in a community that looks at adjacent conservation lands as vacant,” said Julie Wraithmell, the executive director of Florida Audubon and vice president of the National Audubon Society, a 600,000-member conservation organization that strives to protect land and wildlife across the U.S.
Wraithmell said developers might see an open piece of land and think, “Gosh, wouldn’t it be improved with a mini-mall, or with a golf course, or with a car wash?” But she said that such an idea, and the fact the state will contemplate such a land swap, flies in the face of constitutional protections that Florida’s conservation lands have traditionally enjoyed. She also pointed out that environmental tourism combined with Florida’s state parks and forests is a significant economic driver, as is golf.
“If your readers are golf enthusiasts, I’m sure that they do have interest in courses and opportunities” to play, Wraithmell told Golfweek. “I would just say that it’s about the right use in the right place that is the issue here. It’s not an opposition to golf, but it is that these protected places are important to Florida, not just for bunnies and trees but for our quality of life.”
Such objections to Cabot’s proposal have gained steam in recent weeks, especially since the proposal to add golf to Jonathan Dickinson State Park – nearly 200 miles away on the opposite side of the state. That plan was leaked by a state employee who later was fired. The proposal was then formally announced, protested and quickly scrapped in what has become more rare in Florida than a snowball: bipartisan political opposition.
The Cabot proposal had flown under the radar until it was quickly – and without previous announcement or public commentary – sent from the Florida Cabinet and Governor Ron DeSantis to the state’s Acquisition and Restoration Council (ARC), a 10-member group with representatives from various state agencies. Among other duties, the ARC is responsible for evaluating any land swaps involving state-owned conservation properties. The ARC will provide advice to DeSantis and his state cabinet, which then will have final say on approval on Cabot’s proposal.
The ARC next meets Sept. 12 in the state capitol of Tallahassee, but the Citrus Farms proposal is not included on the published agenda for that meeting. There has been no timeline given for when the ARC might make its recommendations, when the group would provide any insight to data and opinions that might be used in making its recommendations, or when there might be a chance for public comment periods.
It’s unlikely Cabot’s proposal would have garnered as much attention if not for the Jonathan Dickinson State Park controversy, which united typically disparate voices. It’s worth noting that while golf is a common thread, the protected lands in question are quite different.
Jonathan Dickinson State Park is a popular respite from nearby and rapidly expanding population centers such as Jupiter, Hobe Sound and West Palm Beach. It’s 11,500 acres include boating and tours, cabins, canoeing, hiking, horse trails, swimming and picnic areas in one of the fastest-growing regions of the United States. The proposed golf courses there would have taken up more than 800 prime acres and forced a reconsideration of the park as it has traditionally been known. That park sees more than 120,000 visitors per year.
The 324 acres of land Cabot has tried to acquire in a land swap sits just west of Citrus Farms and stretches less than a mile wide to the Suncoast Parkway, a major toll road. Highway 98 runs just south of the resort and the patch of Florida State Forest, which provides a wildlife corridor since the toll road was completed. (Map by Google Earth)
By contrast, the state forest land that Cabot wants – part of the Withlacoochee Oak Park South Trailhead – is much less utilized. It includes rough trails and a basic parking area, and there is no official number available as to how many people might hike among its 324 acres. Squeezed between a large highway and Citrus Farms, it is a small part of the much larger Withlacoochee State Forest. Cowan-Dewar pointed out that the land in question was declared part of the state forest only as the Suncoast Parkway was being built beginning in the late 1990s with construction running for decades and still continuing. The environmental groups counter that the parcel is still valuable as a corridor for wildlife that was displaced by the road project, along with other benefits.
Also worth noting is that state parks and state forests are managed separately with different goals. The 10-year plan implemented in 2015 for Withlacoochee State Forest explains the need to preserve land and provide recreation, while also offering the possibility that timber assets can be made available for purchase to lumber companies, with the efficient generation of revenue acceptable. In general, Florida State Parks are managed to much tighter standards of environmental protection than are Florida State Forests.
Still in question is the value of the 861 acres in Levy County that Cabot will provide to the state if the swap goes through. That land has been used for timber production, and multiple studies by state organizations and universities have pointed out that such land and its curated pine trees provide less valuable habitat for wildlife than non-timbered and more natural parcels. It will be up to the ARC to decide officially if the former timberland is worth more to the state and its citizens – in cost, potential revenue and environmental impact – than the acreage next to Cabot.
None of this, of course, is new in Florida. Competing interests long have placed developers and environmentalists into opposing camps. Expect the debate to continue.
“I think it’s heartening to see the way that Floridians are standing up,” Wraithmell said. “I think that everybody is kind of saying that there is no lack of places to play golf in Florida. But it is increasingly rare to find the kinds of places where wildlife is able to thrive and Floridians are able to have these kinds of natural outdoor experiences.
“Both (golf and protected areas) are important parts of the Florida economy. But it’s not a zero-sum game. We don’t have to sacrifice conservation lands in order to also provide golf recreation for our residents and visitors.”
Cowan-Dewar, meanwhile, hopes Floridians don’t confuse Cabot’s proposal with the Jonathan Dickinson State Park conflict.
“I can tell you 100 percent that we had nothing to do with that,” Cowan-Dewar said. “I think they got conflated, although they are very separate and very distinct. …
“For us, this has represented a very meaningful investment into Hernando County and into the state, and I think it’s been an unbelievably welcoming jurisdiction in Hernando. We have been thrilled to be able to grow these jobs and really grow the destination.”
