Straffan, Ireland – While Wednesday’s Ryder Cup practice sessions were severely curtailed by inclement weather, there was no stopping the evening’s gala, a mandatory black-tie gathering that was just one of myriad shindigs leading up to the beginning of play Friday.
“This isn’t how I normally prepare for a major tournament,” Tiger Woods said, with a look and tone that indicated he wasn’t really joking.
But such fetes are indeed part and parcel of today’s Cup. What was once an almost sleepy gathering with some of the best players from two countries meeting in a gentlemanly affair has evolved into a outing that can rival the Super Bowl in terms of working business, corporate synergy and sporting entertainment scheduled around what seems to be a smidgen of play.
It’s a reality forcefully brought home by this year’s event, which is expected to turn a profit of about $20 million at a course, the K Club, few would argue is a world-class venue. According to Golf Digest, the K Club is not only not the best course in Ireland, it’s not even the best course in Ireland designed by Arnold Palmer.
However, what the 550-acre estate does have is plenty of room and, in Sir Michael Smurfit, a business tycoon with the money and clout to bring the event to Ireland for the first time.
Instead of sheep grazing in the grass, blissfully unaware of the golfers traipsing through their pastures, there will be televised shots of Smurfit’s estate, a reflection of the vibrancy that the nation hopes to convey to the world. Instead of a wind-buffeted links landscape, the teams will go out on a beautifully manicured, 7,335-yard, par-72 course that may as well be in Highlands Ranch for all its connection to the auld sod.
“We’ve done some alterations; there’s more runoffs from the greens, so it’s not so much of an American setup any more,” European captain Ian Woosnam said, before admitting that the big selling point was the excitement over the facilities generated by Smurfit’s money.
Sorry that the romance is dead, honey, here’s a Rolex, which, it turns out, is another big sponsor.
No illusions
“The Ryder Cup has always been a big sporting-and-business occasion for the PGA and the European Tour. We unashamedly say we have to exploit this commercially,” said George O’Grady, the executive director of the European Tour.
According to O’Grady, it’s not a chicken-or-the-egg situation, but one big circle; business is good because of the great competition and the competition is great because the business of the Ryder Cup is booming.
“What makes this event so great is that teams are so evenly matched,” he said. “We now have a very strong European Tour, but it wasn’t always like that. You go back to when the British team struggled to be competitive (the event was expanded to U.S. vs. Europe in 1979). We use the Ryder Cup when we negotiate with television and our major broadcasters, we make them cover other tournaments. We use it in our commercial broadcasts throughout the year.
“And the money from that is then plowed back to develop the golf economy and the sporting economy in each country we go to. It’s not just for us to make money, it’s also to secure a strong future for European Tour players. But we do have to make money from it.”
It wouldn’t be fair, from a space, facility or financial standpoint, O’Grady said, to ask a small, private course such as “the great Portmarnock” to try to stage a Ryder Cup; thus, the emergence of venues such as the K Club this year and Celtic Manor in Wales for the 2010 event, which is being underwritten largely by Terry Matthews, described by Golf Digest as “the only billionaire in Wales.”
Package deals
While the farm system in the U.S. always has been pretty reliable – recent Cup results not withstanding – things on our side of the pond haven’t exactly been spurred by abject altruism, either. Whereas in the past, the competition has been held in time-tested venues such as Pinehurst and Oak Hill when played in America, nowadays the locale is apt to be more connected to past, present and future PGA Championships and back-room political deals than history.
In 2008, for example, the Cup will be contested at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., a 20-year-old course whose only tournament of note was the 2001 PGA. Similarly, other future sites, Medinah outside Chicago (2012), Hazeltine National in Minnesota (2016) and Whistling Straits in Wisconsin (2018) have been recent hosts to the organization’s other big-ticket event.
Before the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline – the most recent competition won by the U.S. – the American players squawked about the revenues being generated by the Cup. More specifically, they wondered why the players were basically being excluded from the profits. The PGA quickly responded by setting aside money for each player’s favorite charity; this year, it is estimated that more than $2.5 million will be distributed in their names.
“I think we realize how big an event it is financially for everyone, but at the same time, we enjoy the competition enough that we’re past that,” David Toms said Wednesday. “There isn’t talk about that behind the scenes; the only thing that’s talked about now in that regard is some of the young guys asking, ‘Where is your charity money going? Do I need to set up a foundation?”‘
That’s not to say, however, that those familiar with the Cup in its precorporate days don’t look at what the event has become without a sense of marvel.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Woosnam, who played on eight Ryder Cup teams. “I remember watching on television in 1981, and there was hardly anything out there but the course. Now, you look at all the hospitality tents and the grandstands and everything and you seen how much it’s just grown and grown and grown.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
