BETHESDA, Maryland — With high demand for 2020 Ryder Cup tickets that sold out in less than 50 minutes, there were many disappointed potential customers who came away from the online sale empty handed.
Officials went back to those customers and gave them a second chance to buy tickets for the Ryder Cup, to be held at Whistling Straits next September.
“We were blown away by the demand,” PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh said Monday. “I’ve been to a couple Ryder Cups as a board member, inside the ropes last year in Paris. You just can’t believe the scale of it now. It’s gone so far beyond a golf tournament.”
Waugh compared the biennial event to a Super Bowl, the Olympics or even a rock concert in terms of the immense interest and spectacle.
“We’re thrilled obviously with the reaction of it being sold out to the point where we got overwhelmed with tickets,” he said, while noting the PGA went back and found less than 2,000 customers who were shut out of the online process and delivered their orders.
“I think the reality of anything is mistakes are going to happen, problems are going to come up,” Waugh said. “How you deal with them is what defines you.”
When asked how there was ticket inventory available to fulfill the requests, Waugh joked, “We’ll be a little more crowded now. We created inventory; that was fair. We had clients that did everything right and didn’t get fulfilled.”
Waugh was at Congressional Country Club on Monday as part of PGA HOPE’s inaugural National Golf & Wellness Week, which brought together 20 veterans for a four-day program. PGA HOPE introduces golf to veterans with disabilities and helps many assimilate back into their communities through the social interaction the game provides.
The PGA HOPE program, which serves 2,500 veterans annually, is led by PGA professionals who provide six- to eight-week instructional clinics free of charge to veterans. The program is offered at more than 90 locations nationally.
