They’ve appeared at Broncos, Rockies and Nuggets games to promote the Solheim Cup. They’ve done innumerable media interviews, along with lots of promotional and corporate events. And that only scratches the surface of efforts by U.S. captain Meg Mallon, assistant Dottie Pepper and many others to beat the drum for the biggest golf tournament in Colorado this year.
And, mind you, the event is still more than six months away.
With the Solheim Cup — a biennial Ryder Cup-like matchup between the best female golfers from the U.S. and Europe — being held in America just once every four years, there’s nothing held back.
The Solheim Cup staff estimates that the total economic impact for this year’s event at Colorado Golf Club in Parker (Aug. 13-18) could approach $30 million. And they’re hoping for total attendance of 110,000-120,000 at the golf course and for perhaps the best TV ratings of the year for a women’s golf tournament.
As LPGA commissioner Mike Whan noted earlier this week, “Colorado has been a consistent home run for women’s golf” in terms of fan support.
“This event doesn’t just happen,” said Pepper, the former NBC golf broadcaster, in an interview with COgolf.org on Friday. “You need community support and you need corporate support and you need awareness.
“It’s an event that although it’s over 20 years old now, it’s still gaining its traction, so everything we do is about awareness of the event, getting people involved, and telling them how great it’s been. The whole mantra has been, ‘Don’t wake up on Monday, the 19th of August, and say, ‘Oh man, I missed it.”’
Just this week, LPGA and Solheim Cup officials have gone on another publicity tour for an event that has already generated plenty of buzz with close results in recent years, including a 15-13 European win in Ireland in 2011.
Mallon and Pepper, who have won 35 LPGA Tour events and six major championships between them, and Whan led a contingent to Colorado. Among other stops, they promoted the Solheim Cup at the Denver Golf Expo, where between 100 and 200 people watched a Friday Q&A involving Mallon and Pepper and they later signed autographs. (Pepper, left, and Mallon are pictured above on Friday.) They and Whan also attended Thursday’s Denver Nuggets game, and all three made the rounds with numerous media outlets during the week.
This week was Mallon’s fourth Solheim Cup-related visit to Colorado since being named U.S. captain. She said she’ll probably make four more stops in the state before the week of the event. In addition, she said she’ll probably go on five or six other trips this year to promote the Solheim Cup and attend to various details of her duties.
As for Pepper, she indicated she’ll make six or seven Solheim-related trips leading up to tournament week.
“The event is so big,” said Mallon, whose promotional efforts take up much of her time as U.S. captain, particularly at this point. “It’s our biggest event on tour. It’s every four years that it comes to the United States and there’s an awful lot of planning that goes into it. So it’s just making sure we’re prepared for an incredibly hectic (tournament) week and trying to eliminate as much of the potential problems as possible so we can have a pretty smooth week.
“It’s eye-opening. Being the home captain is a lot of work and a lot of travel, and it’s good that the staff involves the captain. But it’s not something the everyday (tour) golfer does. Instead of being just in charge of your own life, now you’re in charge of 12 lives and trying to logistically make things happen. Not only 12, right now I have 30 people on my email list because I don’t know who’s going to be on the team.”
And the same is certainly true for European captain Liselotte Neumann and everyone assisting her. But the pressure is particularly intense for the Americans, who have never lost a Solheim Cup competition held in the U.S. And, of course, regaining the Cup after a close loss will be a high priority.
“Since they lost in 2011, we have a highly motivated group coming to Colorado,” Mallon said.
And Mallon and Pepper want to capitalize on that motivation by doing their part to assure the Americans play their best in mid-August.
“We want (the players) to know that we have their interests at the forefront,” Pepper said. “We want to make their week is as great as it can be, and as simple as it can be so that they can just go play great golf. The more we can get across to them — give us your junk (problems), we’ll take care of it, we’ll make it go away or we’ll deal with it. That’s what they need to know from us.”
Notable: World Golf Hall of Famer Kathy Whitworth, the captain for the first two U.S. Solheim Cup teams (1990 and ’92), will be the American captain for the Junior Solheim Cup that will be held Aug. 13-14 at Inverness Golf Club in Englewood. Scotland’s Janice Moodie will captain the European squad. Each team will be made up of a dozen players ages 12-18. … Pepper said Friday that the seventh hole at Colorado Golf Club, which normally plays as a par-5, will be a par-4 for the Solheim Cup.
