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Home Sport Ryder Cup: PGA ‘optimistic’ for 40,000 fans per day at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin
Sport
May 20, 2021

Ryder Cup: PGA ‘optimistic’ for 40,000 fans per day at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin

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Ryder Cup organisers are “optimistic” they will be able to offer a “full fan experience” at this year’s tournament at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.

The biennial contest between the USA and Europe was postponed in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic and rescheduled for this September.

This week’s US PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, South Carolina will have 10,000 fans per day.

“We’re hopeful we’ll pull it off,” said PGA of America chief Seth Waugh.

Fans are being allowed back into American sporting venues in many states, with some Major League Baseball stadiums to be at full capacity next month.

Wisconsin has also confirmed that outdoor summer music concerts will take place in June and July and Destination Kohler, which runs Whistling Straits, said earlier this month it expected daily capacity for the Ryder Cup to be around 40,000.

“We have every hope and every desire and we’re working very hard to make it an absolute full fan experience,” Waugh said. “We’re working with the state and local governments to have all those conversations. It’ll be fluid.

“But our plan is to have the greatest Ryder Cup in history. I think the world is ready to have a party.

“It looks like the Olympics is going to happen but not in the way that you would hope it would. And so this is really going to be the first time to cheer for your country, to have that sort of tribal atmosphere that is so important.

“We’re hopeful that September will be one of the great events in golf and a great sort of exclamation point to the end of this thing.

“We think it’s all going to happen fast from here, certainly from a US perspective. I realise the world still has a lot of challenges out there, but from a US perspective, we’re really hopeful we’ll be able to pull it off.”

Ryder Cup tournament director Kerry Haigh added that a proposal for event has been submitted, knowing all aspects are subject to change.

“We’re hopeful that we will be able to have full attendance,” said Haigh, who is also running this week’s US PGA Championship.

“If it were today, we could not based on where Covid numbers are, but certainly with the vaccine and the numbers coming down, we are very hopeful and optimistic that we will be able to have a full attendance.”

It is 30 years since Kiawah Island, which is hosting this week’s US PGA Championship, staged the ‘War on the Shore’ Ryder Cup, which the US won when Europe’s Bernhard Langer missed a five-foot putt on the final hole in the final match. -bbc.com