The Solheim Cup has been a wonderfully close-run thing in recent years. This week in Virginia, it appears it’s too close for comfort.
“Their team room kind of exploded onto the driving range a little bit,” said the US captain Stacy Lewis, of the European base that backs onto the practice facilities at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
“Our players were warming up, and they (the Europeans) are there eating breakfast and talking. We were just trying to get everybody some space so they didn't have to listen to them eating breakfast.
"We adjusted the way the range was set up a little bit and moved the US team further down so Europe could do what they wanted.”
At this rate, the noisy neighbours will be getting an ASBO before the opening foursomes.
The USA, of course, need all the help they can get as they try to halt an unprecedented run of European success. Last year’s epic 14-14 draw at Finca Cortesin in Spain meant the Solheim Cup stayed on the Team Europe mantelpiece for a third successive time. Neither side has kept it for a fourth time.
Tight, tense and with more needle than a mass sewing bee, the Solheim Cup has developed into one of golf’s most captivating contests. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow and all that.
In Gainesville this week, 100,000 spectators are expected to watch the action unfold. It’s a slightly different spectacle to the very first Solheim Cup at Lake Nona back in 1990.
“There were probably 30, 40 people watching, and you had some of the best golfers in LPGA history, like Nancy Lopez and Pat Bradley,” reflected the decorated grande dame, Laura Davies, who played in that inaugural staging and is still involved as a valued vice-captain here in 2024.
“It just didn't have the gravitas that it has now. But it had to start somewhere.”
The USA won the first meeting by a convincing 11 ½ - 4 ½ margin. Two years later at a dreich Dalmahoy, however, Europe responded with a victory that left all manner of books turned up
A star-studded American team boasted a combined 146 LPGA career titles and 21 majors while quotes attributed to the USA’s Beth Daniel – “you could put any one of us on the European team and make it better” – fanned the flames in the European camp. They would roar to an 11 ½ - 6 ½ triumph.
“After the 1990 defeat, it was absolutely vital that we won the second one,” suggested Scotland’s Pam Wright, who played in the first three Solheim Cups during her playing pomp.
“We won at Dalmahoy and people sat up and took notice. It was game on after that and the Solheim Cup became very different in the eyes of the golfing world.”
It certainly did. The compelling nature of the Solheim Cup has been bolstered by a glut of controversies which have added considerable spice to affairs.
This week, Alison Lee is back in the US side for the first time since her torrid debut as a rookie in Germany in 2015.
You may remember it? The ‘gimme’ that never was and an incident that sparked a breakdown in international relations that made the Cold War look like a brief hissy-fit?
Lee picked up a putt she thought had been conceded by the European pairing of Suzann Pettersen – now the European captain - and Charley Hull during a nip-and-tuck fourballs tussle.
Pettersen was adamant it hadn’t been given, though, and stuck by her guns as the stooshie boiled over. Europe were awarded the hole, Pettersen was accused of woeful conduct and both Lee and Hull ended up in tears amid heated, hysterical scenes of finger wagging and tongue lashing.
Nine years on, Lee and Pettersen are back in the Solheim Cup ring. They may have to put barbed wire, mines and a trench between those two team rooms.
“I'm not going to lie, I haven't really talked to her (Pettersen) at all since then,” said Lee, as she mulled over a palaver that would go down in Solheim Cup infamy.
“In the moment it was tough. I was very intimidated at the time. I was a rookie on tour. I didn't really know any of the girls on my team either. I wasn't really good friends with them, but everyone rallied behind me.”
The rallying cries, meanwhile, have been issued by the respective captains this week. It’s onwards into battle.
