The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Arturo Bernal, has visited the facilities of the Finca Cortesin golf course in Casares (Malaga), to learn about the preparations for the Solheim Cup 2023, to be held from 18 to 24 September. It is the first time that Spain hosts the Solheim Cup, the most important women’s golf tournament on the international calendar, which pits teams from Europe and the United States against each other every two years. With just one month to go before the event, 82,000 tickets have been sold and the organizers are predicting a historic full house. Bernal has pointed out that “we are going to experience an unforgettable spectacle and its impact at all levels is already being felt”.
During the tour of the sports complex, the Minister was accompanied by the golfer Noemí Jiménez; the general secretaries for Tourism, Yolanda de Aguilar; and Sport, José María Arrabal; the managing director of the Public Company for the Management of Tourism and Sport of Andalusia, Lisardo Morán; Gemma del Corral, territorial delegate of Tourism, Culture and Sport in Malaga; the General Manager of Finca Cortesín, Vicente Rubio, and Francisco Lancastre, director of golf at Finca Cortesin, among others.
The golf course has undergone some modifications to adapt to the requirements of the Solheim Cup. The new hole 1 allows for a grandstand with a capacity for three thousand spectators, which will allow the fans to be very close to the players. As for the expected number of visitors, Bernal recalled that “82,000 tickets have been sold, which is a record number, and it is especially relevant that 50% of these tickets come from the United Kingdom and Scotland. And it is also important that the usual average of visitors from the USA was 2% and has reached 6%”.
The counselor estimated the media impact of the Solheim Cup at “two hundred million euros. We also expect about 300 million euros of direct and indirect impact. We are talking about an overall impact of about 500 million euros, with an event that will not only place Andalusia and Malaga as a place of reference, but will generate a new icon of golf courses worldwide, “he said in reference to Finca Cortesin, as already happened with the facilities of Valderrama with the Ryder Cup in 1997.
Bernal also wanted to highlight the special sensitivity of the Junta de Andalucía and the golf industry to the drought. In this sense, he explained that “80% of the golf courses in Andalusia irrigate with reclaimed water. And the rest that do not have the possibility of doing so, are irrigating with non-drinking water. Therefore, it is a myth and it is necessary to explain it well: no golf course in Andalusia is irrigating with drinking water. It is a huge effort that has been made by the golf industry”.
The teams are made up of 12 players each and the selection process includes the world ranking, the LET ranking and the free choice of members by the captains. The European team is led by Suzann Pettersen and the United States is led by Stacy Lewis, who will be in charge of putting together the teams that will compete for the intercontinental trophy. Europe has won four of the last six editions of the Solheim Cup, including the thrilling 2019 victory in Scotland (Gleneagles).
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