How Prince William County landed the 2024 Solheim Cup

Hosting tournaments like the Solheim Cup typically involves a bidding process before a site is selected.

But facing a tighter than usual schedule to find a home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the LPGA took a different tack in securing a location for the 2024 Solheim Cup in the United States.

When Robert Trent Jones Golf Club officials expressed an interest in bringing the event to Prince William County this month, the LPGA took them up on their offer. They still did their due diligence by sending out various people to check RTJ and see if it was in fact the right place. They figured out quickly that it was.

“As soon as we got here, we just realized how special the place is and how perfect it would be,” said Lindsay Allen, executive director of the 2024 Solheim Cup.

Penny Lee, chair of the 2024 Solheim Cup and a current member and past president of RTJ, said the course had been in previous conversations with the PGA, USGA and PGA of America about bringing a tournament to Robert Trent Jones, located in the Gainesville area of Prince William off Route 29 on Lake Manassas.

But size constraints limit how many people can attend certain types of tournaments, Lee said.

RTJ’s pedigree, though, helped land the Solheim Cup. After opening in 1991, RTJ hosted four Presidents Cups, including the first two in 1994 and 1996, as well as the PGA Tour’s 2015 Quicken Loans National.

Based on its prior experience with tournaments of that magnitude, RTJ knew what was expected, even with a shortened schedule, and it already had the infrastructure in place.

In February 2022, the LPGA made the decision official – announcing it had selected RTJ as the 2024 Solheim Cup host. This is the first major women’s event ever held at RTJ.

“We knew this was a course ready-made, especially one that could almost turn on a dime to be able to host this with a compressed schedule,” Lee said. “We’ve had this type of event before. We know this is a course suited for match play.”

The Solheim Cup, which features the top professional female golfers from the United States and Europe, typically occurs every two years – alternating with the Ryder Cup, the men’s version of the match-play competition.

The pandemic, however, rearranged the schedule because the 2020 Ryder Cup was postponed a year. Both events were held in September 2023, with the Solheim Cup occurring a week ahead of the Ryder Cup.

Remaining on an odd year schedule, the Ryder Cup returns in 2025, while the Solheim Cup remains on an even-year schedule.

“We are excited to showcase this course to the world, but also to be able to host phenomenal women’s golf and to hopefully expose the game to a larger audience,” Lee said. “We obviously have the White House here and we have over 150 embassies. So we have an international community already built. We want to expose this game not only here in Virginia and elsewhere but across the globe. And we think there is no better venue than here.”