The first Solheim Cup matches will tee off at Bernardus Golf on Friday morning. One time zone away, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry, Tyrrell Hatton and Brooks Koepka will be playing the second round of the Amgen Irish Open at Doonbeg.
Both events deserve an audience. That is precisely the problem.
The Solheim Cup is scheduled to run Sept. 11-13 in the Netherlands. The Amgen Irish Open runs Sept. 10-13. The overlap consumes the entire Solheim Cup competition, and the Irish Open did not arrive with a field that could be treated as background noise.
McIlroy is the defending champion. Rahm is a two-time Irish Open winner. Lowry and Padraig Harrington are major champions who have won their national open. Koepka’s addition was important enough for the DP World Tour to announce it separately on Aug. 27. Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed and several current European Ryder Cup players add still more pull.
Golf fans can watch more than one tournament. Streaming, replays and phones have made that possible. They have not created more front pages, more lead segments or more hours in a viewer’s weekend.
Team golf also asks more of the casual viewer than a familiar leaderboard does. Pairings change by session. A player can sit in the morning and become central in the afternoon. The audience benefits from the preview shows, interviews and daily coverage that explain those decisions. When the same news cycle is busy with McIlroy at home, Rahm returning to an event he has won and Koepka joining the field, some of that useful Solheim Cup buildup gets squeezed before the first match begins.
Match days: Sept. 11-13
Site: Bernardus Golf, Netherlands
Tournament rounds: Sept. 10-13
Site: Doonbeg, Ireland
Scheduling Is Part of the Support
Women’s golf is often told it needs stronger television windows, more promotion and larger audiences. Those are fair goals, but the sport cannot discuss them only after the calendar has been built. A premier team event should not have to spend its week negotiating for oxygen against one of the deepest non-major men’s fields of the fall.
This is not a complaint about the Irish Open assembling an excellent field. Doonbeg should promote every recognizable player who enters. McIlroy defending an Irish Open title on the west coast of Ireland is a legitimate event, and the additions of Rahm and Koepka make it far more compelling.
The criticism belongs higher up the scheduling chain. The LPGA, Ladies European Tour and DP World Tour each have sponsors, venues, broadcast partners and international calendars to satisfy. Moving a tournament is not as simple as dragging a box to another weekend. Still, difficulty does not excuse accepting a conflict that was easy to see and costly to both properties.
I have been part of this argument for most of my career, usually from the player-development side. A clinic can bring girls and women through the door, but it does not settle what happens next. Access, staffing and scheduling are less visible than the group photo, and they often reveal more. In this case, the calendar did the talking.
Only One Event Will Be Asked to Prove Itself
The Solheim Cup already carries pressure that the Irish Open does not. If the men’s event attracts a strong crowd and delivers a good finish, it will be viewed as a successful week. If Solheim Cup television or digital numbers fall short of expectations, someone will eventually ask whether women’s golf can sustain attention.
That would be a poor reading of the test. An audience divided by a preventable scheduling collision does not tell us the same thing as an audience given a clean runway.
The 2024 Solheim Cup gave this year’s matches genuine competitive weight. The United States won 15.5-12.5 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, ending a winless stretch that dated to 2017. Europe now comes to Bernardus with Anna Nordqvist as captain. Angela Stanford leads the Americans. The event has new captains, a different continent and an American team trying to prove that one victory changed the direction of the series.
Those are strong storylines. They should be carrying the week.
Golf has made progress in how it presents women’s competition, but progress becomes difficult to measure when the industry’s choices keep interfering with the product. A great Solheim Cup can break through a crowded weekend. It has done so before. Requiring it to do extra work should not be confused with treating it as a priority.
The Calendar Can Be Better Than This
There is a reasonable counterargument. September is crowded. Tours need suitable weather, available venues and cooperative television partners. The Irish Open also has a home audience, commercial commitments and a place in the DP World Tour season that cannot be moved casually.
Fair enough. The answer is earlier coordination, not resignation.
The Solheim Cup is known years in advance. Its competitive dates should become a protected point around which the major tours begin their discussions. Protection would not require every men’s tour to go dark. It should prevent a tournament capable of collecting McIlroy, Rahm, Lowry, Hatton and Koepka from landing directly across all three match days.
By Friday, the mistake will be handed to the audience. Choose the Solheim Cup session or follow McIlroy, Rahm and Lowry in Ireland. Editors will make a similar call with homepage space. None of them created the collision. They will simply be living with it.
Friday at Bernardus should begin with foursomes, pairings and the discomfort of asking another player to live with your miss. It will begin that way for the competitors. For too much of the golf audience, the conversation will already be split.
PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on R.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.
