Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt,” sighed the Roman poet Juvenal 2,000 years ago. Well, 2024 is surely providing a fulsome treat for circus fans. Besides all the regular events filling the usual weekly tent of sports, this year the calendar has also been cramming in the rotating spectacles of the Euros, the Americas Cup, the Olympics and the Paralympics. Plus one lesser known: the Solheim Cup.
Lesser known because the Solheim isn’t the Ryder Cup. Which is of course the three-day battle for world domination between Europe and America. A kind of latterday Boston Tee Party, held on the green sward of a golf course. It’s an old and noble competition, going back to 1927, with only WWII and Covid-19 interrupting the quest by both sides to prove themselves the superior civilizing force. To date, 44 Ryder Cups have been contested. The current tally is 27-15 to the USA, although Europe would probably wish to point out that since 1979 – in other words, the entire epoch of the modern game – the score reads 12-9 in their favor. The single most important number about the Ryder Cup is, however, that it’s played 100% by men.
On the tee from France, Céline Boutier. When Europe won at Gleneagles in 2019 by a single point, Boutier was joint-top scorer with a perfect 4/4. (Shutterstock)
Which is where the Solheim Cup comes in. This is the women’s equivalent to the Ryder, alternating with it bi-annually. The Solheim is likewise a three-day event structured around 28 match-play foursomes, fourballs and singles between the same competing continents. The parallels couldn’t be more parallel, except when it comes to the players’ gender and therefore the amount of TV coverage it gets.
The Solheim is relatively young and originated in 1990 from a slightly unlikely source – a married couple from Norway. If Norway isn’t a land you instantly associate with golf, what with all those fjords giving you the yips at every tee-box, for Karsten and Louise Solheim, girls’ and women’s golf was a cause deserving support. Which wasn’t surprising given that, 30 years before, in 1959 Karsten had invented the PING putter in his garage. The couple moved to Phoenix, Arizona and established the now legendary global brand. The Solheim Cup may be young, but it has legacy through and through.
No lack of interest in the women’s game here. Great courses make great matches. From the first tee at Gleneagles, those hills in the distance are just out of bounds. (Shutterstock)
If the internet is your lens on the world, you’ll know that women are equally capable of knocking ten bells out of each other in boxing rings and MMA cages, playing football with more adventure than men these days, and grinding their opposite numbers into the ground in rugby scrums. They wrestle, fence, scale mountains, fight bulls, hold their breath underwater for hours and are just waiting for mainstream TV to catch up with them.
The figures warrant it. In Europe, just over one million women account for 26% of registered adult golfers. In the US, over 6.4 million women play, and spend an estimated US $1.5 billion on equipment and apparel.
This year (13-15 September) the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia hosts the Solheim Cup. USA have failed to win the previous three match-ups, though they lead the historical scoresheet 10-7. Both captains will be gunning to show the tuned-in spectators where real world domination is coming from next.
Gerina Piller didn’t start playing golf until age 15 but quickly made up for lost balls with a stellar rise to success. Following through on her three consecutive Solheim journeys – 11 matches played, two team wins and one loss, joint-top scorer for USA in 2015 – she shares her thoughts with Storied on how the nap is lying for the women’s game. (Above: Piller tees off at the sixth hole of the LPGA Malaysia tournament in Kuala Lumpur / Shutterstock)
Meanwhile, Gerina Piller, stalwart of three USA Solheim teams (2013-2017), recalls a controversy that occurred in 2015 at the St Leon-Rot course in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. During the Sunday morning conclusion of the final four-ball, with the match all square on the 17th green, Solheim rookie Alison Lee missed a putt that would have won the hole for the USA. Believing her 18-inch leave had been conceded for a half, Lee picked up her ball. Whereupon her European opponent Suzann Pettersen insisted the putt had not been conceded, meaning a by-the-rules win for the hosts and a 10-6 lead going into the concluding singles session. Claims of unsporting behavior cracked the air like lightning, as the atmosphere turned dark.
One of the points of discussion at the 2024 Solheim Cup: the return of two players from that controversial day in 2015, Stacy Lewis and Suzann Pettersen – now opposing team captains. (Shutterstock)
In fact, the incident spurred American revenge. They fought out 8 wins against 3 in the singles, bringing home the biggest comeback victory in the competition’s history. “Winning the Solheim came from what happened to Alison,” said one team member. “We said we’ve got to right a wrong.” That team member was Stacy Lewis, who as Captain of the USA team this September in Gainesville, may just be looking forward to re-acquainting herself with this year’s Captain of Europe, one Suzann Pettersen.
Gerina Piller won her singles match that day in Germany with an 18th-hole cliffhanger that helped seal the win. She told Storied: “You can’t put a price on memories, but the Solheim is really vital in helping to forge the future of women’s golf. The television exposure the Solheim brings creates the kind of noise around our game that the men’s game gets all the time.”
Locked and fully loaded, a pro golf bag weighs in at over 30 pounds (13.6 kilos). No carts, no trolleys, literally man-handled by caddies around the 9,301 yards (5.3 miles) of the Robert Trent Jones course chosen for the Solheim, September 2024. (Shutterstock)
Piller served on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) board for three years and knows the realities of what it takes to even partially narrow the gender gap between the games. “Women have to pay to be on TV,” is how she puts it. While the men’s game strides along on the fairways of main-channel network coverage, for Piller the women’s game remains caught in “a familiar circle of sand traps: pay-per-view channels, less attractive sponsorship, lower prize money at the end of the round.”
You’re playing for honor and pride of country. That’s pure inspiration for juniors beginning the game. The Solheim is like the Olympics of golf. – Gerina Piller
The international attention the Solheim brings is a leveler. Like the Ryder, no purse is on offer. “You’re playing for honor and pride of country. That’s pure inspiration for juniors beginning the game,” Piller says. “The Solheim’s like the Olympics of golf.”
Herself an Olympian in Rio in 2016, she sees great opportunities here for the women’s game to gain more traction. “If we could harness the model of other sports – mixed doubles in tennis, mixed relays in triathlon, mixed teams in equestrian and the buzz around the mixed track relay in Paris this year… Just imagine the stir if World #1 Nelly Korda partnered Scottie Scheffler in a fourball at the next Olympics in LA!”
Putters working. Triumph for the red, white and blue – on this green at least. (Shutterstock)
Piller has another stick of logic in her bag on how to promote women’s golf. It taps the concerns many sports lovers have over advanced equipment technology as the science of modern sport risks overwhelming the human touch. Layer on the physics of hyper-trained male musculature, and golf courses are getting tamed. “Entertainment isn’t about one-dimensional power,” she says. “Physically we can’t thrash our way out of heavy rough like men, we have to chip out and make par the hard way. So women are more relatable for the amateur game. Doesn’t that make for a better TV watch?”
The figures match the argument, and the Solheim leads the field. The 2023 Cup in Spain was the most watched ever, with a peak TV audience of 734,000 in Europe on Sky, up 35%, and just shy of 1 million in the US on NBC. Expect those numbers to be beaten again in Virginia this year. Whoever the eventual winner, it’ll be women’s golf.
Main image: This year’s Solheim Cup will be Lexi Thompson’s last as a full-time golfer. She announced plans to retire at the end of 2024, aged 29. (Shutterstock)
