YOU CAN look at the Solheim Cup staging in two ways.

One, that it brought an end to Ireland’s hosting of truly top-end world events, coming on the back of a successful Ryder Cup in 2006 and two WGC-AmEx championships in 2002 and 2004; or, two, it reaffirmed the Irish golfing public’s appetite for these showpiece occasions.

Certainly, despite the poor weather for Sunday’s thoroughly enthralling climax, the whole event was an unqualified success.

Indeed, its appeal was demonstrated in the fact that both Sky Sports on this side of the Atlantic and The Golf Channel in the United States changed their schedules to stick with the unfolding drama at Killeen Castle.

As Roddy Carr, the director of the Solheim Cup 2011, admitted: “You couldn’t have written the script if you sat down for a month and dreamed it up.”

The consequences of Europe’s win – effectively silencing any thoughts or suggestions of a change in the format to incorporate the burgeoning women’s game in Asia – are immense, with Carr likening Europe’s win here with the Ryder Cup win by Tony Jacklin’s team in 1987.

“This staging was a fresh, new surprise for everybody in terms of the strength of the event. It’s moved the event into the next stratosphere, a bit like the Ryder Cup at Murifeld Village. It’s up into a new league.

“On a global sense, it’s an amazing jump forward for women’s golf.”

However, the reality is that the Solheim Cup – just like the Ryder Cup – won’t be staged again in Ireland for a long time.

Other countries are in a queue to play host to such events and there is also the harsh reality that the financial clout is no longer in Ireland to enter into bidding wars with other potential host venues.

So, what next for Ireland when it comes to playing host to big international events?

Although the government has played its part in ensuring the survival of both Irish Opens – men’s and women’s – in recent years, using the tournaments as strong marketing tools to attract inward tourism to the more than 400 courses in Ireland, Carr is convinced a new model will have to be adapted going forward.

“They have to find a sustainable model which is a challenge for all golfing events. You have to make them sustainable, so that you’re not putting sticking plaster on them from year to year.

“That’s the challenge, to keep the Irish Open sustainable . . . we can’t afford it, literally.

“We can’t afford three or four million (events). The government can’t afford it. The sponsors can’t afford it,” said Carr, who believes that a different approach, already tried and tested in the USA but unfamiliar in Europe, could be the way to go.

He explained: “I’m working on a new model, more of a charity/community-based model which means changing the existing sponsorship model. The question is, how do you make it sustainable over 10 years?

“To do that, you’d have to build it on the American model, where cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee, small cities that shouldn’t be sustainable for a major event but (have proven) over a period of time, based on the community model, that they actually work.

“You have to admit the current sponsorship/promoter model is broken, that its not sustainable and we are going to build a new model. Ireland has a very good record in per capita spending on charity.

“JP McManus has proven that there is potential for a charity model, albeit that is a one-off, it is an out-of-the-box job and nobody else could deliver that. But if you look at the women’s marathon and other things, there is enough there matched up with the American model to say you could build a sustainable new charity/community model that could work.”

Carr hopes to bring that new charity-community model to the Ladies Irish Open, admitting the concept is in its early stages but hopeful that it will start from 2013 onwards.

Next year’s Ladies Irish Open is scheduled to return to Killeen Castle, hopefully enticing a number of Alison Nicholas’s team to return to the scene of arguably Europe’s greatest triumph in the Solheim Cup.

The staging of the Solheim Cup – and, let’s be honest, the manner of Europe’s back-from-the-dead win – put a book-end on Ireland playing host to big-time golf.

It effectively started with the K Club winning the bid to stage the Ryder Cup (originally set for 2005 but staged a year later due to the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US) and was followed by the two WGC-AmEx tournaments at Mount Juliet in 2002 and 2004 when Tiger Woods and Ernie Els respectively won.

It could be that we have seen the best of it, in terms of staging big-time events.

But, in this golden era of Irish golf, highlighted by six Major titles since 2007, it is probably more important than ever that the two Irish Opens live on.