Bland Gleneagles Course No Issue as Players and Fans Build Ryder Cup Atmosphere

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: September 27, 2014

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GLENEAGLES, Scotland — A popular line this week at the Ryder Cup is that the PGA Centenary Course at Gleneagles is the fourth best golf course in Auchterarder.

The joke, of course, is that there are only four golf courses in Auchterarder.

Despite its Jack Nicklaus-designed credentials, you will struggle to find too many avowed fans of this week’s venue for the Ryder Cup, a venue first opened in 1993. It is a very Americanised, stadium-style layout that seems slightly incongruous for the heart of Scotland; for many it is approaching sacrilege that the Ryder Cup would come back to Scotland for the first time in 41 years and then not be played on a traditional links course.

There are two links-type layouts at the Gleneagles resort (the resort is inland, so cannot technically be a links), with Auchterarder Golf Course not far away. But the fact the event is being played on the Centenary speaks to the very specific demands of hosting a Ryder Cup, demands that mean the quality of the course and its prestige is not highest on the list.

To understand it, you have to realise how important the Ryder Cup is to the European Tour, one of the controlling organisers. As ESPN reported this week, the Ryder Cup essentially subsidises the European Tour’s running costs for the years in which there is no competition.

As Bob Harig wrote:

In simple terms, the European Tour loses money in non-Ryder Cup years, makes a tidy profit in years the event is played in the United States and then hits the lottery in years the tournament is staged in Europe.

Earlier this year, Golfweek reported that the European Tour made more than 14 million pounds in pre-tax profit in 2010, the last time the Ryder Cup was staged in Europe. A year later, when there was no Ryder Cup, it lost more than 2.2 million pounds.



With the event so important to organisers, maximising revenu...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Golf

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