The Solheim Cup's Venue Problem
The Solheim Cup exists to showcase women's golf at its highest level, to inspire participation, and to grow the game. So when we scored the courses that've hosted the Solheim Cup, we found ourselves asking, 'Why do the powers that be keep choosing venues that most golfers will never play?'
When you score 21 Solheim Cup hosts against our rubric, the Access and Affordability average is 49.52 out of 100. That's significantly lower than the 71.36 we found across the St Andrews Links Trust courses. The Home of Golf, open to anyone willing to enter the ballot, is considerably more welcoming than most Solheim Cup venues.
The pattern becomes starker when you split the cohort by geography.
The Atlantic divide
European hosts, broadly speaking, welcome you in. Dalmahoy Country Club scores 87 on accessibility, the highest in the cohort. St Pierre in Wales scores 83. Gleneagles, one of the world's most recognised golf resorts, manages 81. Killeen Castle hits 73. Barsebäck reaches 71. St. Leon-Rot scores 73. Halmstad scores 53, the lowest of the European contingent, but still above the American average.
Cross the Atlantic and the doors close. Muirfield Village scores 29. Crooked Stick scores 27. Rich Harvest Farms scores 29. Robert Trent Jones Golf Club scores 29. Inverness Club scores 33. Interlachen scores 33. Lake Nona manages 42. Valhalla, fresh from the 2024 PGA Championship, scores 36. Colorado Golf Club scores 37. Des Moines scores 37.
That's a 60-point gap between Dalmahoy and Crooked Stick. Not an insignificant difference.
Quality isn't the issue
The American venues aren't scoring poorly because they lack excellence. Quite the opposite. Inverness posts 90 on Course and History, reflecting four U.S. Opens and Bobby Jones walking its fairways. Interlachen scores 82, commemorating Jones's 1930 Grand Slam. Rich Harvest Farms scores 79 despite its relative youth. Des Moines leverages Pete Dye's architecture and its Solheim heritage effectively.
Muirfield Village, Jack Nicklaus's creation, scores 88 on Digital and Social and 83 on Reviews and Media. The Greenbrier hits 97 on digital presence. Valhalla posts 87 on Reviews and Media. These are serious golf courses with serious reputations.
But they're private. Built for members. The Solheim Cup arrives, the world watches, and then the gates close again.
The European alternative
What's striking about the European hosts is that accessibility hasn't come at the expense of quality. St Pierre tops the entire cohort at 812, combining strong Facilities (91), solid digital presence (92), and genuine openness (83). Gleneagles follows at 807 with the highest Facilities score in the group (93) and Reviews and Media at 91.
Dalmahoy proves the point most clearly. It scores highest on accessibility while maintaining Facilities at 87 and a respectable history score of 66. Championship pedigree and public access, coexisting without apparent tension.
Even Finca Cortesín, which scores just 55 on accessibility, welcomes resort guests and visitors willing to pay premium rates. Its Reviews and Media score of 93, the cohort's highest, reflects the acclaim following its 2023 hosting. Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands, the 2026 host, scores 46 on accessibility but 92 on digital presence, suggesting a club at least interested in engagement.
The question that lingers
The Solheim Cup alternates between Europe and America. In Europe, fans who watch on television can reasonably aspire to play the same fairways. In America, with few exceptions, they cannot.
This matters because access creates connection. A golfer who plays Gleneagles or St Pierre or Dalmahoy carries the Solheim Cup story forward. They tell friends. They remember where Suzann Pettersen holed the winning putt, or where Europe mounted an improbable comeback. The venue becomes part of their own golf history.
A golfer who watches Muirfield Village or Inverness on television has a different relationship. Admiration, certainly. But not the personal connection that comes from walking the same ground.
The Greenbrier (765) and Valhalla (667) offer partial exceptions as resort properties with some visitor access. But the dominant American model remains the private club, chosen for prestige and conditioning, inaccessible by design.
Looking forward
None of this is to suggest the Solheim Cup has made wrong choices. Championship golf requires exceptional venues, and extraordinary venues often come with restricted access. Logistics, infrastructure, and competitive quality all matter.
But in an era when golf is actively trying to broaden its appeal, when governing bodies talk constantly about growing the game, the accessibility question deserves attention. The European hosts have shown that world-class and welcoming can coexist.
Every golfer who plays a Solheim Cup venue becomes an ambassador for the event. The more venues that allow that pilgrimage, the more ambassadors women's golf creates.
This analysis draws on observable, customer-facing data collected through the Pindex scoring methodology. Scores reflect performance across 100 variables. The findings represent inferences about competitive positioning rather than assessments of financial health. Pindex does not access internal financial data.
