The United States Open Golf Championship is the most prestigious of the four major golf tournaments in the world, at least in the opinion of many. In its four-day run, the U.S. Open draws crowds well over 120,000, and people come from all over the world to watch this competition and support their favorite golfers.
The tournament is telecast to billions of people all around the world. It is bigger than the Super Bowl.
If you haven’t heard, the U.S. Open Golf Championship is coming here in 2015, just three years away. It will be played at Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place. This means tens of thousands of people will be coming to the greater Tacoma area for the four-day tournament, and our area will be showcased on TV around the world.
This is an opportunity either to shine or to stumble, depending on what we do starting now. The U.S. Golf Association surely has people on the ground working with local committees to address the issues of housing and transportation for all the officials, golfers and fans, but we haven’t heard anything about their plans. It would be nice to know what they are thinking, but here are our thoughts.
With limited on-site parking and narrow city streets, spectators and volunteers and probably golfers and officials will need to be shuttled from central parking areas, such as the Tacoma Dome and Cheney Stadium.
The solution for housing may need some creativity. There are no hotels or motels in University Place. Tacoma and Lakewood have several hotels and motels, but all are far from the golf course. We’ll need housing for 10,000 to 15,000 people.
Strangely enough, income tax law may provide some help. IRS Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax, page 68 provides, “If you rent property that you also use as your home and you rent it fewer than 15 days during the tax year, do not include the rent you receive in your income and do not deduct rental expenses.”
This means people in South Sound communities can rent rooms or their whole homes to people and groups attending the tournament, and the income will be tax-free! For years, people in Augusta, Ga., have been renting their homes for the week of the Masters, and the owners simply leave town.
They charge rates as high as $10,000 per week. That kind of tax-free money will pay for a pretty nice vacation, someplace away from the crowds of thousands of people.
Maybe the local U.S. Open committees and the USGA can work with neighborhood associations and city folk to create websites for people who want to offer their homes to tournament visitors and to provide shuttle service. It’s not too early to start planning and working toward hosting our visitors from around the world and really showcasing our area for the U.S. Open.
Bruce and Jean Dransfeldt, retired certified public accountants, live on Anderson Island.
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