2024 Solheim Cup Starts with Fan Shuttle 'Disaster'

2024 Solheim Cup Starts with Fan Shuttle ‘Disaster’

“Epic fail.”

“Catastrophe.”

“Debacle.”

“S***present.”

That’s how followers who truly made it to Robert Trent Jones Golf Membership on Friday morning described their shuttle expertise attending to the course. For the remainder of the hundreds of followers nonetheless standing in line on the Jiffy Lube Dwell parking zone as of mid-morning native time, we’ll have to attend effectively into the afternoon to listen to what phrases they use to recount their journey. That’s in the event that they haven’t given up and gone dwelling out of frustration – an affordable plan of action once you’re locked out of the moveable restrooms whilst you wait.

 

Let’s rewind a couple of hours to earlier than dawn on the first tee. I visited the grandstands shortly after 6:00 am and located only a couple hundred followers of their seats. Extra alarming was that the staircases have been fully empty. Nobody was streaming into the first-come, first-serve stands to say their spot at the perfect theater in girls’s golf.

Issues then went from unhealthy to worse. It rapidly grew to become clear that the primary tee environment can be severely missing when two of probably the most recognizable faces within the sport, Nelly Korda and Charley Hull, led off the proceedings simply after 7 a.m. native time. Stories from these a couple of miles away who arrived on the shuttle website in what ought to have been loads of time to see the primary teams tee off shared that they’d barely moved in any respect.

“Clearly you discover that the stands aren’t full, however what issues is everyone seems to be out right here now cheering for us loud,” Korda stated after closing out a gap level for the USA aspect within the morning foursomes session.

Shortly after 9:00 a.m. native, the LPGA despatched out the next assertion:

We acknowledge and deeply apologize to all followers affected by the challenges with shuttling from parking to the golf course. We’ve made important adjustments to our transportation system to mitigate these points transferring ahead, and we’re engaged on methods to precise our remorse to these impacted.

Primarily based on the temper (which might solely be described as mad as hell) of the dozen or so followers I spoke to this morning, these phrases received’t do a lot of something to ease their frustrations. A gaggle of older girls utilizing their moveable seats for help whereas coming into the course stated they received’t be returning tomorrow. The harm has been accomplished, and the LPGA, by its personal hand, has someway managed to perhaps even shrink its fan base at its greatest occasion of the 12 months. An wildly spectacular feat on a morning that must be a stain on the group into the longer term.