Golf:The venue for the 2018 Ryder Cup - a fight between France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands - will be announced on May 17th. It will be only the second time that the match has been staged in continental Europe after Valderrama on Spain's Costa del Sol played host in 1997.
The official announcement, to be made at the European Tour’s Wentworth headquarters, comes at the conclusion of the first formal bid process undertaken by Ryder Cup Europe, which commenced at the end of 2008.
Richard Hills, Ryder Cup director, said: “It has been a hugely challenging and stimulating process, taking almost 18 months to complete.”
Sweden were also involved in the early stages, but pulled out last March for financial reasons and said they would focus on the 2022 match instead. An evaluation panel then undertook a detailed process to validate the five bids, including site inspections, and each of the candidates submitted a bid document.
Hills added: “On May 17th we will be able to announce one gold medallist and four silver medallists. All five could have hosted the 2018 Ryder Cup based on the detail and quality of their bids and, although one country will be successful, we look forward to continuing our close relationships with each one of those five countries in the future.”
Bid director David MacLaren added: “At the outset we said that we wanted to make the right sporting decision and the right commercial decision. We then set our five key criteria against which the bids would ultimately be judged; provision of a world-class golf course, infrastructure required to deliver the Ryder Cup, government, private and golfing support, commercial opportunities for Ryder Cup Europe and the contribution of the host nation to the development of golf.”
Next year’s match is at Medinah near Chicago on September 28th-30th and Europe next stages the match at Gleneagles in Scotland in 2014, with the exact date still to be announced following the problems with the weather in Wales last October.
