Why hasn't the Ryder Cup been played in California since 1959?
Imagine the year is 2107, and the Ryder Cup is coming back to California for the first time since the event between the United States and Europe was last played in the Golden State in 2033.
Impossible, you say? The PGA of America would never go 74 years between Ryder Cups in one of the largest, most populous, most golf-crazed states in the country?
Guess again. Because that is exactly what is happening now with the Ryder Cup, one of the game’s premier events. When the matches hit the Olympic Club in San Francisco in 2033, it will have been 74 years since the matches were last played in the state. That was in 1959, when Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells hosted the event.
It is true that the 1991 Ryder Cup was first awarded to PGA West in La Quinta, but those matches slipped away in the night to Kiawah Island in South Carolina. So California golfers must wait for their next Ryder Cup, 12 years from now.
It’s almost impossible to explain the extended absence unless you understand that golf and golf courses aren’t necessarily the overriding concerns when it comes to the Ryder Cup. Sometimes it is about the availability of a course, sometimes it is about time zones and sometimes it is about who wants to promote their golf course.
Just like with a major championship, the PGA of America needs a golf course that truly wants to host the Ryder Cup. It’s easy to say that a Pebble Beach or a Riviera is worthy of a Ryder Cup, but do those courses want to go through the years of preparation and potential hardship on members or the public to actually bring the event to a course? Sometimes the answer to that is a firm, "No. We'll pass."
Second, a golf course might want to host the event, but does a facility have what is needed to host it? Modern big events like the Ryder Cup need massive amounts of land for things like hospitality tents, television compounds, parking and even concessions and grandstands around key holes. Not every course has that much available land, and the PGA of America isn’t going to some course where the chances to maximize profits are limited by a lack of space.
As for California, well, there is the East Coast and European television issue. Both the U.S. Open and the PGA Champion have been played on the West Coast in recent years with television embracing the prime-time viewing period, meaning play extends to 10 or 11 p.m. on the east coast, prime time for viewers in that time zone. But that doesn‘t work as well for the Ryder Cup, where television in Europe is a key. That might explain why the Ryder Cup is played on the east coast or the Midwest and not on the West Coast. It also explains why West Coast viewers have to get up at 5 a.m. to watch the start of play for the first two days or this year’s Ryder Cup in Wisconsin.
To be fair to the PGA of America, the Ryder Cup is coming back to the state, but only after it first visits Bethpage Black in New York in 2025 and then Hazeltine in Minnesota in 2029. The 2037 Ryder Cup has not been awarded yet, so that could be in California, as could the Cup matches in 2041 or 2045. The Golden State might grab any of those events.
And it is also possible that having back-to-back Ryder Cups in the desert back in the 1950s at Thunderbird and Eldorado country clubs might seem unfair to people in states that may never host the matches.
But this is California and some of the best courses in the world are inside its borders. It would be a shame if the PGA waits another 74 years to bring the matches to the state again after Olympic Club in 2033.
Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer, he can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4633.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Ryder Cup: Why hasn't California hosted since 1959?
