GAINESVILLE, Va. – LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan met with the media on Saturday morning and owned the transportation disaster that took place on opening day of the 19th Solheim Cup. Fans were stuck in the Jiffy Lube Live parking lot for hours on Friday, missing the first-tee experience and most of the morning foursomes session at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
“I don’t want to get into exactly who, the details of the responsibility,” she said when asked who was in charge. “At the end of the day, I’m the leader of the organization and I have to own it. We have a tournament team that runs all of this, but I’m sitting up here in front of you as the leader of the LPGA, and I need to own that.”
When pressed for specifics on how many buses were in circulation on Friday morning and how many were added for later in the day and Saturday, Marcoux Samaan said that was a “complicated question.”
“We were writing spreadsheets and trying to figure it all out,” she said. “We didn’t have enough buses in the morning, clearly. When we started the day — the staggering was to sort of have three, four times more during the course of the day, but they were scheduled to start later and then there were some delays.
“The exact numbers, I can’t tell you at every hour what we had, but let’s just suffice it to say there were not enough.”
Fans who went on Friday were told by volunteers that only seven buses were running on Friday morning. The LPGA put out a statement late Friday night that said four times the number of buses had been added for Saturday morning, though that post was later deleted.
In addition to not having enough buses, Marcoux Samaan said they didn’t have enough staff in place to load the buses and communicate with fans, and that the staging area wasn’t sufficient or efficient.
Around 8 p.m. ET, fans received an email from Marcoux Samaan that offered an apology and two free tickets for the weekend. Many had asked for a refund. Competition round tickets were $110 plus an extra $30 for parking.
“We spent time yesterday trying to figure out logistically what was possible, and it’s challenging to figure out who was affected, who wasn’t affected, how we could handle it logistically from all parts of the organization, and .. that was the best way we could find just to acknowledge that the morning was not what we expected, what we wanted, what we believe in, what we value, and if they’d like to come back again, we’d welcome them back,” she said.
Fans who came on Saturday morning zipped through the parking lot and boarded the shuttles with ease thanks to a significant increase in buses. With RTJ hosting a number of high-profile men’s events, including the four Presidents Cups on U.S. soil, Marcoux Samaan admitted this was an LPGA problem and nothing more.
For many fans, Marcoux Samaan’s words might be too little too late.
“I think the fans when they got here, they had a great time,” said Marcoux Samaan. “Yes, it was disappointing. We’re not happy with what happened. I don’t think it’s going to be long-term damages to us. We have to make sure our fans know how much we care about them and how much we whiffed.”
