Days After Taking Away US Open’s Honor With a Dreadful Decision, USGA Faces a Massive Fraudulence Accusation

The pandemic was a living nightmare for everybody. Besides the heartbreaking deaths of millions of people, the financial loss of many people and businesses hit everyone hard. And the golf association USGA was no exception to this.

The delayed opening of the US Open in 2020 and other events, caused massive losses. But apparently, with the aid of heavy insurance benefits, they were able to reclaim a major portion of their COVID losses.

USGA makes insurance claims for pandemic business interruption

In 2020 the U.S. Open, which was scheduled in June, was postponed to September that year due to the pandemic. This caused USGA to suffer a setback of a big chunk of money that is generated by ticket sales, advertisements, sponsorships, broadcasting, and other means.  The annual revenue of the US Open is around $165 million which is 75% of the USGA’s total revenue which further funds other national championships conducted by the USGA. And the delayed event meant delayed income. But the golf body did allow it to affect their business.

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According to its 2021 Internal Revenue Service Form 990. the USGA filed an insurance claim for the losses suffered during this era, in 2020. And they were redeemed with a compensation of $29.5 million. This claim allowed them to carry on with some other limited tournaments.

According to the USGA’s chief financial officer Susan Pikitch, it was a much-needed step that helped them big time. She said “Our business was significantly impacted in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, especially when we postponed the U.S. Open. Based on projections of revenue loss, our insurance policies enabled us to recoup a portion of that revenue to continue our core services.”

USGA is bashed by fans for making LACC as US Open venue

But ironically the same USGA that has made millions of dollars worth of profit from the US Open, has been severely bashed by fans for this year’s very poor setup at LACC. Compared to other better venues LACC’s physical capacity is very less, and the terrain is ill-fit for holding large crowds and could fit around 23,000 people. Plus it is a tough task to get to the venue in first place. The setup at Los Angeles Country Club was labeled easy, boring and a ‘Mickey Mouse course’ by many fans who blamed USGA for it.

For a tournament that is so financially rewarding one would think that it deserves the utmost attention in terms of management and setup. Maybe it was just the committee’s mothed of cost-cutting.

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