GAINESVILLE, Va. – Attached to the outside of the second floor of the European team cottage on the left side of the building was a large, round clock with hands and numbers that read 5:28 p.m. Sunday afternoon at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
You could almost hear it ticking, it was so quiet. Nothing more than the gentle movements of the club’s main road.
It was a different atmosphere from what you experienced during a week of training and competition in the 19th century.and Solheim Cup.
This cottage, which is next to the cottage the Americans used as their team room, offered a bit of fish food for those hungry for some controversybut there was nothing substantial. It was just a matter of personal and professional space, and maybe a little pettiness.
This Solheim Cup, one of the most emotional ever, had nothing to do with hostility. Even when a few American caddies ripped their shirts off and ran amok on the second hole of a match, there was no public row. A few writers grumbled, but European captain Suzann Pettersen merely joked: “Sex sells. Go for it.”
(There were off-site issuesrelated to fans trying on the grounds. That will probably linger for a while, but that is from the LPGA and had nothing to do with the players and teams.)
US finally gets the headline it wants: Americans win Solheim Cup
There were several ways the US could have won on Sunday, but in the end the Americans got what they wanted.
Pettersen has been at the helm of the European Championships for almost three years. Retired since her iconic (true use of the word) Solheim Cup-winning putt in 2019, she is now 43 and a mother of two.
If you want to talk about emotions, Pettersen has shown that in abundance in her career. She still has that passion, but on Sunday it was shown differently.
With the outcome decided and the final game finally played, the Americans gathered as a group in the 18and fairway and walked in unison to the green for the official trophy presentation. The European contingent moved aside in the left rough, a symbolic transfer of power.
Pettersen was already there, both arms around the shoulders of Emily Pedersen, a captain’s pick who had played well the previous two days but suffered in a 6-5 singles loss to Megan Khang, a major setback for Europe’s record-breaking comeback hopes.
Pedersen, who vociferously defended Pettersen as an integral part of the team, was inconsolable. Her match was the second in the singles and against America’s biggest bundle of energy. The Dane’s day included a shank off a tee box and, after Pettersen had tried to instill some confidence, a direct hook into a hazard on the next hole.
As Pedersen wept and hung her head, Pettersen spoke softly to her, tilting her head to look her player in the eye.
Nearby, Carlota Ciganda melted into the arms of Pettersen’s husband. The Spaniard was a home hero last year, winning the European retention. This time, she went 1-3 and lost her singles match very well.
Eventually, the four found each other and formed a small circle. “I’m so f***ing proud of you,” Pettersen said to them both. She repeated it, over and over. It was rude, perhaps, but it was also motherly.
A few minutes later it was Pettersen who had to hold back her tears, something she has become increasingly accustomed to since retiring from football as a player.
“I’m a mother now, so I’m quite sensitive, quite emotional,” Pettersen said. “I literally cry for nothing.”
Her tenure as European Solheim Cup captain had ended abruptly and unsatisfactorily. For Pettersen, however, the real heartache came from, not from her or that she, personally, had lost her purpose. But the fact that, for the first time since she devoted herself to something other than golf, she was one of them again.
“What I love most about this job, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, is that even though I haven’t been competing week in and week out, I still feel like I’m part of the playing community. As a retired player, you step away, you don’t see everyone every week, you miss seeing your friends on tour,” she said.
“So just feeling like I’m part of that player body has been what gets me up every morning to make this the best experience I can for all of them. That’s probably where I sit back and relax. Now that I’m done, I hope I don’t get cut out of the WhatsApp group. Yeah, I really enjoyed that.”
Narratives are a funny, fickle thing. No matter how long they’ve been around, they can change suddenly and seemingly forever. Then they can shift and send you in a new direction.
Pettersen was Europe’s fiery stalwart. Then she was too energetic and bad for the cup persona. Then she was a legend. Then she was a victorious captain. Now she’s a captain who, technically, has never won in two tries.
On the other hand, her American colleague Stacy Lewis has transformed from a captain who was seen by the public as a losing captain to someone who, technically, has never lost in two attempts.
What Lewis never changed was her approach. After all, everything she had done before had resulted in a draw – not a defeat – so why drop it? No, instead she dug deeper into the analytical trenches.
While Pettersen focused on the intangibles, Lewis was determined to prioritize the hard numbers. This time, they came out on top with 15 ½ points and America’s first Solheim Cup victory since 2017.
Shortly after Pettersen and her vice-captains left the media center Sunday evening, Lewis and her entire winning team took to the podium.
They looked exhausted.
No bottles of champagne or cigars (if you drink them at all). No drunken nonsense or excessive joy.
“We haven’t had a chance to celebrate yet,” said Lauren Coughlin, who went 3-0-1 in her debut playing in front of friends and family in her home state.
“This has been seven years in the making for a lot of women on this stage,” Lewis added. “There’s a lot of them — actually 10 of them that haven’t had this party yet, so we’re going back to the crew room to celebrate.”
Nine of those players were also on the 2023 team. While Europeans were cannonballing into a swimming pool in Spain that Sunday, Americans were about to leave, heartbroken by the beauty of Finca Cortesin.
It was on the return flight that Lewis realised the moment.
“I was on the plane with my daughter, and she was sleeping, and I lost my cool and started crying,” Lewis said. “I thought, we’ve done all this work to get these girls to play evenly, and that was literally the only moment. From that point on, it was back to work, because I don’t want that to happen again.”
Part of that job was making sure her team had fun. They wanted a karaoke machine, they got a karaoke machine.
“Literally,” Lewis said earlier this week, “I’ll give them everything they need to play good golf.”
In the chicken-and-egg paradox, fun came first. Fun begat good golf, which begat more fun, which begat more good golf, which begat a crystal trophy.
“There was just something different about this team,” said Lexi Thompson, making her seventh and possibly final Solheim Cup appearance. “The atmosphere, the energy from the team rooms to the bus rides to the first-tee experience.”
The opening hole, except for opening day when unforgivable transportation problems delayed the entry of fans, was electric. An estimated 2,000 people stood on the tee box, where music pulsed to deafening pitches and everyone from former President Barack Obama to a caricature of Abe Lincoln appeared.
Nelly Korda came out of her bubble, twirled, shook and wobbled. Khang, who is supposed to run on a self-changing hybrid battery, bounced, hopped, pumped and jumped.
Everyone was singing, everyone was dancing – the Europeans too. That’s something we always see at a Solheim Cup. It’s just been a while since we saw the Americans extend it to Sunday night.
After their final obligations, the American team returned to their cottage and finished off with champagne from the trophy.
Maybe it was there that the moment struck Lewis. Maybe it came later, when she was alone with her family. But sitting in the media center, just before the bubbles, Lewis admitted, the stress was gone. “The shoulders are already down,” she said.
When the business was over, it was time to move on, to the hotel to party as long as the adrenaline would allow. At the front, with a freshly relieved Lewis, as social media showed, they marched in singing and dancing.
And they sang, “I want to dance with someone.”
