Fans To Get Stiffed at Open

Had tickets for Thursday's rain shortened first day at Bethpage? Think your getting some sort of compensation or rain check? Think again.

From ESPN:

Even though most of the field didn't hit a ball Thursday, tickets for the day are no longer valid for the rest of the tournament.
Unlike baseball, where a rain check is issued if an official game isn't played, the USGA has no such policy.
If a whole day's play is wiped out, the USGA would honor that day's tickets at a later date, possibly Monday, if the the tournament were forced to continue on a fifth day.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. While it does make sense that the USGA would honor the tickets for today, I'm struggling with how they would. Because the stated goal is to play the rest of round one and all of round two on Friday, it would be impossible to honor tickets for both days. Like the above passage says, this isn't baseball. The possibility of make up days for fans is virtually non-existent. Allowing two sets of crowds on any of the next three days would be ludicrous. Plus, what if their are more rain outs this weekend. You can't very well play favorites between each set of stiffed fans.

Full monetary refunds would also be hard to do. A lot of these tickets were given to corporations and as part of packages. How do you determine what the value of the refund would be? Surely, it would be unfair to get a full refund. After all, their was the possibility of seeing more then half a round from some of the players. Tiger Woods got six holes in. Sure, it stinks that it rained, but are you entitled to a full money back refund? I don't think so.

This looks like one of those situations where Joe Fan has to grin and bear it. What happened at day 1 of the 2009 U.S Open was awful for everyone. Not one person involved, player, fan, or USGA official, wanted rain to come. But some things just can't be controlled. Some things don't have a solution.

Is it fair? No. But neither is life.

Jordan Lauterbach