Solheim Cup 2028 Goes to Valhalla: Kentucky Hosts for the First Time

People only learn how much they love a tournament at the moment it leaves.

Cromvoirt, the Netherlands, the afternoon of September 13, 2026. I stood at the edge of the technical area at Bernardus Golf, just behind the volunteer seating, as the final match of the 20th Solheim Cup came to an end. Marieke, a Dutch volunteer, was folding chairs. She folded them one at a time, very slowly, even though the loudspeaker had urged everyone three times. Above the main grandstand, the organisers had just finished the announcement: the next edition will be played at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, from September 8 to 10, 2028.

Marieke did not look up. She asked me where Kentucky is. I told her: the American South, the land of bourbon and basketball. She nodded and kept folding.

I hear a whole career in the crying on a grandstand. At Cromvoirt people cried over a missed putt, but what the stands regretted most was the two-year wait ahead.

The Solheim Cup leaves the Netherlands, and the Kentucky problem begins

The Solheim Cup is a women's team event between the United States and Europe, held every two years since 2026. The 2026 edition at Bernardus Golf was the 20th; the 2028 edition at Valhalla will be the 21st. Between those two editions lies one large difference: for the first time in history, this women's event will be staged on a course owned by the PGA of America.

The United States entered the 2026 cycle as defending champion, after beating Europe 15.5-12.5 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia in 2026 under captain Stacy Lewis. That was the first US Solheim Cup victory since 2026 in Des Moines, ending a run in which Europe won in 2026, won in 2026 and retained the cup in 2026 after a 14-14 tie at Finca Cortesin, Spain.

The format is three days, twelve players per side and 28 matches in total. Days one and two feature four foursomes and four fourballs; the final day is twelve singles matches. The first side to reach 14.5 points keeps the cup. The format is almost a copy of the Ryder Cup, which is precisely why a course once chosen for a Ryder Cup tends to enter the Solheim Cup conversation a few years later.

In other words, when the organisers read out the name Valhalla, they were not merely announcing a venue. They were announcing a business model.

Valhalla is no stranger

Valhalla was designed by Jack Nicklaus, opened in 2026 and was purchased by the PGA of America in 2026. It has hosted four PGA Championships: in 2026, Mark Brooks beat Kenny Perry on the first hole of a playoff; in 2026, Tiger Woods beat Bob May after a three-hole playoff in one of the greatest majors ever played; in 2026, Rory McIlroy finished one shot ahead of Phil Mickelson; in 2026, Xander Schauffele closed with 263 strokes, 21 under par, the lowest 72-hole score in men's major championship history.

The course has also hosted two Senior PGA Championships and one Ryder Cup, in 2026, where the United States beat Europe 16.5-11.5. That was the first American Ryder Cup win since Brookline in 2026, and it was the edition in which captain Paul Azinger first split his team into small groups known as pods. Much of what the Ryder Cup uses today was tested at Valhalla that autumn.

For a Solheim Cup, the organisers will have to do the opposite: pull the course back to the right length for women's golf. Valhalla was set up at par 71 and 7,609 yards for the 2026 PGA Championship. With average LPGA driving distance currently around 250 to 265 yards, the Solheim Cup version in 2028 is likely to measure roughly 6,400 to 6,700 yards. One piece of land, two completely different yardsticks, and that is a design problem rather than a cosmetic one.

The most interesting point is the 18th, a par five. At the PGA Championship it is where the second shot decides everything; at the Solheim Cup it could become a hole every player dares to reach in two, turning the closing stretch into a run of head-to-head duels. The amphitheatre around the 18th green at Valhalla is among the largest in American golf. In a team format, a grandstand is not seating; it is part of the tactics.

One more variable few people calculate: climate. Early September in the Ohio Valley is hot and humid, with daytime temperatures that can reach 30 to 32 degrees Celsius. Soft ground, little roll, a course that plays longer than its card. When the length gap between the two teams is already one of the biggest tactical differences, Kentucky weather may tilt the balance before the opening ceremony.

2028 is also a heavy year. The Summer Olympics take place in Los Angeles, with golf scheduled at Riviera Country Club in July. For women professionals, the calendar becomes a compressed sequence: majors, the Olympics, then the Solheim Cup in early September in Kentucky. A team event placed after an Olympic Games always faces questions of fitness and motivation that no sponsorship contract can solve.

Look at how the hospitality tents filled every inch behind the 18th green at the 2026 PGA Championship and you see where the money sits: with the organiser, while the city of Louisville receives what trickles down through hotels, restaurants and taxes. The relationship with the community runs through invoices more than through memory. A small private course in Scotland or Spain has had decades to build that relationship; a course held in the portfolio of a large association has to build it from scratch.

Asia has no place in this story

I write for the Japanese market, so I always ask myself how Japanese fans watch the Solheim Cup. The answer is a little sad: they watch as outsiders.

The Solheim Cup has only two teams. A Japanese, Korean or Chinese player, however good, has no door in. Ayaka Furue won the 2026 Evian Championship and has won on the LPGA Tour, and she still cannot be there. The team event for Asian nations is the International Crown, but since the 2026 edition at TPC Harding Park, where Thailand won, there has been no further edition.

Based on my experience following matches across many seasons on both sides of the Pacific, I notice something odd: precisely because they have no home team, Asian fans follow the Solheim Cup as a study course, watching the format and the way a captain spends her picks. In Vietnam, where women's professional golf is still young, that distance is even greater.

A few years ago, when I worked as a guest commentator at a volleyball league in Japan, I learned one thing: fans following an event without a home team attach themselves to a person, not to a team. The Solheim Cup in Asia works the same way. People remember a specific player's putt first, and the winning side second.

The counter-intuitive view: major pedigree does not create atmosphere

There is an assumption everyone nods along to: the more majors a course has hosted, the bigger the event. I am not sure.

The Solheim Cup grew up in small places. Gleneagles in Scotland in 2026. Inverness in Ohio in 2026. Finca Cortesin in 2026, with grandstands built on hillsides and sea wind in spectators' faces. In those places, people came for the tournament. At Valhalla, people may come for the course, and go home with memories of a different event.

Louisville is a basketball city before it is a golf city. The University of Louisville, the Kentucky Wildcats, March evenings at the KFC Yum! Center. Golf here is a guest that arrives on a schedule, every two years or less often. The crowd at the 2026 Ryder Cup was intimidating, but that crowd bought tickets for the Ryder Cup, not for Valhalla. Whether Valhalla has a crowd of its own is a question only the years after 2028 can answer.

A technical barrier does not stop emotion; it only makes it pile up.

And then there is memory. The 2026 PGA Championship at Valhalla will be remembered by the world's media through two images. One is Xander Schauffele lifting the Wanamaker Trophy with a record 263. The other is Scottie Scheffler in handcuffs outside the gate on the morning of May 17, 2026, driving into the course while police were directing traffic after an accident; the charges were later dropped on May 29, 2026. Fewer people mention that Scheffler shot 66 that same day.

Two events, one week, one course, and people remember the second one more. A venue does not write its own story.

What stays

My job is hosting large events. I thought being an MC meant holding a microphone; it turns out it means holding other people's heartbeats. A golf course is the same. Valhalla can hold thirty or forty thousand people on an afternoon, but it cannot generate a rhythm on its own. Rhythm comes from a putt on the 18th, from a captain's shout, from a twenty-two-year-old being called by name in front of a crowd for the first time.

Two years from now, when the two flags go up in Louisville, the real question will not be whether Valhalla is big enough. The question is whether the Solheim Cup can keep the feeling Bernardus Golf has just sown, or whether it will trade a bigger grandstand for a smaller soul.

I will be standing there to hear the crying on the grandstand one more time. If nobody cries in Kentucky, then every record on the board is only paper.