Solheim shuttle snafu was a disaster

What Alex Learned? Heads must roll; Masters adds more weekend coverage, new sponsor

The first tee was less than packed when play started Friday morning (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Apologies for being a day late. Traveling to London cost a day, and “What I Learned” needed another day.

So, what I learned this week is that the LPGA may know how to run a faucet, but they clearly don’t understand how to run a significant golf event.

The Solheim Cup is as close to a major as you can get in the women’s game. With the added spice of nationalities and the fan fervor for the red-white-and-blue USA and the blue-and-gold of the European flag, it may be bigger than a major.

Years of planning are involved, and last week at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, the women’s version of the Ryder Cup was supposed to be an experience with the U.S. winning for the first time in four Cups since 2017.

It was an experience, alright, and not the good type, as many of the fans who hoped to be in the stands around the first tee on Friday morning when the matches kicked off were stuck in a Jiffy Lube parking lot waiting for buses that never came.

This meant that the first-tee experience, which is a fundamental part of any international team cup event, was like a half-inflated balloon — there was no energy.

According to LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the deflated first-tee experience was a combination of a lack of buses, traffic, inefficient loading and manpower issues.

On Saturday, Samaan explained the problems and, to some extent, the solutions.

The question is, why were there problems to begin with?

Judging by the number of buses needed or rush hour traffic, which may be a problem, it seems like a no-brainer that they would have been addressed months before coming to Virginia.

Samaan took responsibility, which is the appropriate response, but spending most of a Saturday morning in an interview explaining the problems you experienced the day before and what you did to fix those problems is a losing proposition.

Samaan explained that everything that could go wrong in getting fans and volunteers from the parking lots to the golf course did go wrong. Even the port-a-potties were a problem for the fans, and according to Samaan, they were a mess. No other description is necessary.

In short, they blew it. A failure of immense proportions.

Fans waited hours for buses to take them to course Friday morning (@emily_dono/TwitterX)

But although they got it moving in the right direction by the end of Friday and had the situation under control by Saturday morning, the damage was done.

Now the question is, what should they do going forward?

As Samaan said on Saturday, the LPGA is a small organization, so it’s possible it is understaffed. But that is not an excuse for what happened on Friday.

A massive blunder of this proportion requires a head or two to roll in any organization.

Let’s be honest. If you have one job to do — getting fans to the course — and cannot handle it, you need to be replaced.

Samaan did an good job at damage control, but she said it on Saturday — “I don't want to get into exactly who, the details of the responsibility. At the end of the day, I’m the leader of the organization, and I have to own it. We have a tournament team that runs all of this, but I’m sitting up here in front of you as the leader of the LPGA, and I need to own that.”

The commissioner admitted that it is the LPGA’s responsibility to diagnose where and why the problems occurred. If that process doesn’t require a change in personnel, then it is time for a new commissioner who will make the hard choices.

When the Solheim Cup returns to the U.S. at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky., in 2028, let’s hope what happened in Virginia will be a distant memory.

Of course there’s always the Louisville police to worry about.

That discussion’s for another time.

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Masters will boost weekend coverage

September is not a month when you expect to get press releases from Augusta National, but club chairman Fred Ridley delivered a couple of announcements on Tuesday. One of them is of particular interest.

More coverage!

CBS Sports will expand coverage hours of the Masters Tournament on Saturday and Sunday beginning in 2025, adding five hours of live coverage of the third and final rounds. That will bring the total to 14 hours of weekend coverage on CBS and Paramount+, in addition to their digital feeds Thursday through Sunday.

CBS and Paramount+ will air the tournament live from 2–7 p.m. EDT on Saturday and Sunday, April 12-13. That’s one extra hour for Saturday’s third round. Additionally, two hours of live coverage have been added on both Saturday and Sunday to air on Paramount+ from 12–2 p.m. Commercial time per hour will remain unchanged at four minutes.

‘The Masters Tournament has had the great fortune of enjoying an extraordinary relationship with CBS Sports for nearly 70 years,” said Ridley. “Alongside our friends at the network, we are pleased to extend the tournament’s weekend coverage and ultimately deliver more live golf for Masters fans.”

In other news — sponsors!

Bank of America will become a “Champion Partner of the Masters Tournament” beginning in 2025, joining AT&T, IBM and Mercedes-Benz, who each have extended their relationship as “Champion Partners.” Delta Air Lines, Rolex and UPS have returned as “Tournament Partners.”

Not that you’ll ever notice. If an ATM popped up on site, it would surely just be called “Bank” just like “Cola” and “Sport Drink.”

“Through Bank of America’s support of our community initiatives and amateur events, they have become an impactful and committed partner in our organization’s mission in Augusta and around the globe,” said Ridley. “Today’s announcement celebrates an expansion of our relationship, and we are delighted to welcome Bank of America to our valued family of Masters Tournament partners, which together will strengthen the tournament for many years to come.”

Bank of America has already been a dedicated partner within the greater Augusta community for several years, demonstrating its commitment to support initiatives at the HUB for Community Innovation and invest in the transformation plan at Paine College. Additionally, Bank of America has served as a “Proud Partner” of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur since the inaugural championship in 2019, as well as the Latin America Amateur and Asia-Pacific Amateur championships since 2022.

The 2025 Masters is scheduled for April 7-13.