It's The F@&king Solheim Cup!
We interrupt the seemingly endless supply of PGA Tour Playoff (playoff) golf to bring to your attention the very big event in women’s golf coming up this long weekend.
The festivities of the 17th iteration of the Solheim Cup get fired up this week; three days of competition starting on Saturday, culminating in the crowning of the winners on Labor Day.
The Solheim Cup, while relatively young, has a rather hotly contested history:
- Biennial matches involving teams from USA and Europe (12 players per side)
- Started in 1990, matches mimic the format used in the Ryder Cup
- named after Ping founder Karsten Solheim, the driving force behind the event’s creation
- USA leads the overall matches 10-6
- Europe won the most recent event in 2019 in Scotland
This year’s event is being held at the Inverness Club (Toledo, OH)
- Hosted numerous big-time golf championships in its 120-year history
- US Open (4 times), PGA Championship (twice) among other high profile events
The team captains for this years’ Solheim Cup are Pat Hurst (USA) and Catriona Matthew (Europe). The captains for each team have different ways to populate the rosters:
- USA: top-7 from LPGA Tour Solheim rankings, next two on World Golf Ranking
- Europe: top-2 from European Solheim Rankings, next four on World Golf Rankings
- Both teams fill out rosters with captain’s picks (USA: 3, Europe: 6)
Since 2002, the format is very familiar to those live for this “Us Against Them” type of golf:
- eight foursomes and eight four-balls played on days 1 & 2, 12 singles on the final day
- 28 points total, 14½ points to win Cup (14 points required for Europe to retain Cup)
- Format adopted permanently after the 2000 Solheim Cup used an abbreviated format
While the USA looks pretty stacked on paper, there is nothing like F-bomb-filled, patriotism-fueled golf to bring out the best in a perceived underdog.
Even better news for those of us that can’t get enough of women’s team golf; there will be back-to-back Solheim Cups contested in 2023 and 2024, a move made to get the Solheim and Ryder Cups back to offsetting years (due to the Ryder Cup getting bumped from the pandemic in 2020 to this year).
