Everyone seems to know that the Ryder Cup it is named for – at all now – the British seed merchant Samuel Ryder, who donated the trophy. But how many people know that the Solheim Cup is it named for a Norwegian transplant named Karsten Solheim, who started making ping putters in a garage in Phoenix that eventually grew into an innovative club-making empire known throughout golfdom as Ping, a division of Karsten Manufacturing?
It’s all true!
“We were given three options for the name of the event,” John Solheim, one of Karsten’s sons, now in his early 80s, said the other day. I know them it was the organization that puts on the Solheim Cup, the LPGA and the LET, the Ladies’ European Tour. “Solheim Cup, Karsten Cup or Ping Cup. I’m happy they went with Solheim.
This year’s event is the 20th edition, and is played on a remote course inside a forest, best reached on foot, by bike or on horseback: Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands, near . . . almost nothing. It is an hour and 40 minutes by car from the Amsterdam Hilton, where John and Yoko had their interesting 1969 bed-in for peace. Bernardus, a new course designed by American Kyle Phillips, also gets high marks for being interesting. That’s what John Solheim says. It’s here this week. He has never missed a Solheim Cup, returning to the first in 1990, held at the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, not far from Disney World in Orlando.
You’d think Mr. Solheim, already in Holland, might want to take a side trip to Bergen, Norway, and his father’s childhood home. He could do it, but not so easily. You could fly from Amsterdam to Bergen but then your adventure is just beginning. Solheim did it before, when the Solheim Cup was in Sweden. Solheim discovered that his father’s childhood home is not in Bergen, a rainy seaside town that is Norway’s second largest city, after Oslo. The house is located on an island in the area that, as he remembers, he needs a boat to get there. The houses on this island, as in all of Norway, were colorful and sensible and orderly. There were also a dozen family members who lived in the house during Karsten’s childhood. Karsten’s father was a shoemaker. Karsten became one too. He had good hands, not so much to play the game that became central to his life, but to make his instruments.
His son, John, was asked the other day if his father had conflicting interests rooted in the Solheim Cup, since he was a European by birth and upbringing, but has grown up, in every sense, as an American.
“What he rooted for was a close match,” Solheim said. “Every time it was close, it was good for the event, good for interest in it and ratings.” The United States have won the Cup 11 times, the Europeans have won it seven times and in 2023 the event ended in a tie. (This week’s edition, through two sessions, is tied 4-4.) Karsten Solheim died in 2000 at the age of 88, so he did not take that, at least not from the ground level. But John is sure his father would have loved it.
Ping, the company, and the Solheim family have always loved women’s golf, and always felt that it was greatly underestimated. “My dad was amazed by his box, how straight they could hit it,” Solheim said. Part of the attraction for him was his engineering mind – he saw golf as a problem that could be conquered with superior engineering. Also, his wife, Louise, liked to watch the women’s game. The company has sponsored dozens of LPGA events over the years, typically paying all the bills to broadcast those events, then having to sell advertising spots for them in an effort to jumpstart it. “We don’t,” said John Solheim. “But it was still worth it.” To this day, the business is family owned and operated. John’s son, also called John, runs it today.
It was neat, at a press conference the other day, to listen Anna Nordqvistthis year’s European captain, mentions Karsten and Louise Solheim by name. The Swedish golfer, just 39 years old and retired from the competitive game, was on the European Junior Solheim Cup team in 2005, then played on nine Solheim Cup teams, and now runs a show he knows well. He went out of his way to mention the founders.
“I don’t think we need to hype up the Solheim Cup rivalry, but there has always been drama and controversy, because that’s the nature of Solheim Cup golf,” a reporter asked the captain. (The question and answer are slightly edited here.) “Have you talked to your team about how to approach something a little heated or controversial?”
No mention of the Solheims here, right?
His response, speaking to include his American counterpart, Angela Stanford:
“At the beginning of our captains, I think we both know that there will be some moments outside with a lot of emotions, a lot of adrenaline running, a lot of things that happen. But at the end of the week what Karsten and Louise Solheim have created is a stage for women’s golf to thrive.
Is it precisely the spirit that Karsten and Louise were looking for.
“If they could see this event today, they would be amazed,” John Solheim said of his father. At least John was there, for the 20th time. He was amazed. He saw where his father came from, and where his naivety led him. He saw the event that his father created, and what it became. It’s called the Solheim Cup. good name
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