When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Doug Ferguson's game story on Europe's historic win over the U.S. at Colorado Golf Club notes Europe's 6-rookie squad and Caroline Hedwall's amazing 5-0 record in leading her team to an 18-10 rout.
Phil Parkin's post-match interview with an eloquent, modest Hedwall.
Steve DiMeglio captures the losing moment and the essence of what separated the two squads.
Following a 55-minute weather delay, Sweden's Caroline Hedwall, 24, playing in just her second Solheim, defeated Michelle Wie with a last-hole birdie from 5 feet to give the Europeans the 14 points they needed to keep possession of the Cup. Hedwall become the first player in Solheim history to go 5-0.
The USA, on the other hand, could never get a handle on the undulated, firm and slick greens throughout the tournament and now has lost their grip on the Solheim Cup.
Jay Coffin on the other star from this Solheim Cup, 17-year-old Charley Hull who pummeled Paula Creamer, then asked for her autograph.
John Strege wonders where this leaves the state of American golf.
A Solheim Cup is not entirely indicative of the strength of any specific group of players, but the signs aren't good for the U.S. For the first time, Europe has won consecutive Solheim Cups, and its victory at the Colorado Golf Club was its first in America. Caroline Hedwall, only 24 herself, a star heretofore still in the assembly stage, went 5-0 in these matches, securing the cup for Europe with an 18th-hole birdie to beat Michelle Wie.
Left unsaid in all of this is how yet another American team (male or female) struggled in formats other than singles, and really never quite grasped how to deal with the sensational firm-fast golf presented by Colorado Golf Club.
That may have been part of Dottie Pepper's thinking in issuing this ominous statement about the depth of American golf, as reported by Beth Ann Baldry in her roundup of the last day.
And now, as Dottie Pepper sat beside the 18th green waiting for the final match to come in, the Europeans an hour deep into their celebration, one of the fiercest competitors the game has ever seen stated an obvious, yet painful fact about American golf:
“The world has caught up and passed (us),” Pepper said.
Baldry also handed out grades. The Americans will be going to summer school.
And mopping up a Saturday controversy when Michelle Wie left a green early in celebration, Coffin has her apology Tweets.
Golf Central's highlight package.
The jovial European team interview.
The not-so-jovial USA post match interview, helmed by the classy Meg Mallon.
And just as a viewer, this was yet another win for architecture. While most of these team matches would be interesting if played on a polo field, Colorado Golf Club's brilliant agronomic presentation highlighted Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw's architecture. What a joy it was to watch the ball spending so much time on the ground, doing wonderful things when the players controlled their shots.
Throw in some super hole locations and fresh camera angles from Golf Channel that allowed us to better understand the scale and strategy of the holes, and we once again saw why the powers insisted on team match play for the 2016 Olympics why team events are still better than 99% of the stroke play events.
Kudos to all involved for an entertaining presentation of our sport.
Jimmy Golen's AP story on Matt Fitzpatrick's 4&3 win over Oliver Goss at the U.S. Amateur at The Country Club touched on many parts of the first English win since Harold Hilton(!), including this on his deceptive dominance.
From Golen's report:
Fitzpatrick never trailed in the final match, taking the lead for good on the second hole of the afternoon round - the 20th of the day - and going 2 up one hole later. Goss cut it to one on No. 9, but fell behind two again on the 10th hole when he lipped out on a 4-foot putt.
Fitzpatrick went 3 up on the 14th hole and then on No. 15, where he had won four of his previous five matches, he was short of the green and Goss was off the back.
Goss' chip missed the hole by about 6 inches and rolled 3 feet past, while. Fitzpatrick two-putted from the closely mown area leading up to the green, hitting his second from less than 6 feet. When Goss missed his par putt, the two shook hands and Fitzpatrick hugged his brother, Alex, who was caddying for him.
"It was nice to win 4 and 3 again today," Fitzpatrick said. "It's kind of a strange thing. I did have a feeling that I could close it out."
Fitzpatrick, who was the low amateur last month in the British Open, got a gold medal for his victory along with exemptions into the 2014 U.S. and British Opens - where he will be paired with defending champions Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose - and a likely invitation to the Masters. His name will be inscribed on the Havemeyer Trophy alongside five-time winner Bobby Jones, three-time winner Tiger Woods and two-time winners Jack Nicklaus and Ouimet.
It's the first time Englishmen have won the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in the same calendar year.
The story of the caddies was as compelling as the matches, particularly considering this was the home of Eddie Lowery. Saturday, Ryan Lavner noted the amazing occurrence of semi-final loser Brady Watt picking up Goss' bag for the final, where there was Fitzpatrick's younger brother on his bag. Still, it'd be great to know if a semi-finalist has ever looped for the man he lost to the next day? (NBC showed a photo of Watt and Goss going to a Red Sox game Friday night on the eve of their match!)
NBC's coverage, however, lacked one of those thrilling, pulsating and buzz-killing interviews with a member of the USGA Executive Committee or senior staff. The poor affiliates losing out on such a ratings booster.
Anyway, in his story from Sunday, Lavner noted this about Fitzpatrick, who is following in Luke Donald's footsteps by attending Northwestern.
The Fitzpatrick family has a four-year college plan in place, however, no matter how impressive and mature Matt has seemed this summer in earning low-amateur honors at the British Open and winning the U.S. Amateur, all in a four-week span.
“This might be as good as it ever gets,” Russell Fitzpatrick said. “You just never know. Professional sport is really, really tough. I’ve seen players turn pro, and we never hear from them again. If he decides to play professional golf someday, he has no pressure because he knows he has a fallback option. If he turns pro after one year and it doesn’t work out, and he doesn’t have a degree, if he’s just a flash in the pan, then what’s he go with?”
A super USGA image gallery from the final.
Matt Fitzpatrick's post-win interview with Jessica Marksbury.
Fitzpatrick's parents were interviewed.
Oliver Goss' post-match interview.
You can follow Fitzpatrick on Twitter here.
And it's on her left hand, and it's absurdly large, so I believe this means Ms. Gretzky is off the market. Sorry to Alex and Sam and all of the others who were hoping Paulina would dump Dustin Johnson for them.
Paulina hasn't Tweeted anything personally, but did re-Tweet a congratulatory message from Hannah Selleck.
Thanks to reader Brad Power for spotting and Tweeting this momentus moment in golf history.
Ryan Herrington with a nice account of Saturday's U.S. Amateur semi-final matches won by Matthew Fitzpatrick and Oliver Goss.
The good news for Goss, a 19-year-old who'll start his sophomore season at Tennessee this fall? It would seem hard for Fitzpatrick to repeat his stellar performance around on the greens for a second straight day. On the 12 holes Fitzpatrick failed to hit in regulation, he still made eight pars in addition to chipping in for a birdie that helped swing the momentum in his favor.
"I think my short game was probably the best of my life I think," said the young man who claimed low amateur honors at last month's British Open. "Sort of every chip and putt I looked at was close."
The two finalists, headed to the U.S. Open and most likely a Masters invite for both, later convened at Fenway Park to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Red Sox-Yankees game according to this Golf Channel gallery.
Julie Williams with a nice wrap of Friday's day one Solheim Cup brouhaha over an incorrect drop taken by Carlota Ciganda.
Ciganda hit her fourth shot onto the fringe and made the par putt to secure an unexpected halve with Lewis and Thompson.
“Obviously I’m not happy about it,” Mallon said. “The thing I’m most unhappy about is that it took ... about 25 minutes for this to happen. And from our perspective, the momentum, which was coming in our favor at that point in time, obviously had stopped.”
Questions were posed at the time of the drop, Mallon said, but perhaps not the right ones. Play proceeded, and Pettersen birdied the next hole to take the Europeans 1 up. They won by that margin at the 18th, when Pettersen made a clutch two-putt par.
Golf Central has the video and also the Captains talking about what ended up being an incorrect drop.
Rex Hoggard as a solid wrap-up of the week's various stories--Bethpage, PGA Tour taking over the European Tour and of course, the big one, the elimination of caddie races.
I'll let you take in his analysis of the others, but there was this note on the "baffling" decision by the USGA to abandon Bethpage and Torrey Pines.
The 2008 Open at Torrey Pines may arguably be this generation’s best major, and Bethpage, although soaked for both Opens it hosted, is a perfect combination of qualify golf and prime location.
The USGA’s slow play on both venues has prompted the PGA of America to be a bit more proactive. Golfweek magazine reported this week that the PGA plans to name Bethpage the venue for the 2024 Ryder Cup and 2019 PGA Championship; and sources have told Cut Line that the association is vying to bring the year’s fourth major to Torrey Pines.
While the PGA deserves credit for outside-the-box thinking, may we suggest they hold off on any official announcement until, say ... next year’s U.S. Open. You know, for maximum coverage and all.
My sources say the USGA is interested in Torrey again and that the San Diego people have demanded a Ryder Cup with any PGA they take, something that is hard to see happening because Europeans would have to watch afternoon matches in the middle of the night.
Or maybe any move to Torrey is stalled because of the San Diego mayoral situation.
After watching the morning coverage of the Solheim Cup, I'm wondering when the PGA of America jumps on Colorado Golf Club for a PGA. Wow does it look great this time of year and the crowds seem huge.
Marvin Pave profiles Cynthia Wilcox, the only surviving child of Francis Ouimet looper Eddie Lowery, who is on every serious golfer's mind this week with the 100th anniversary of the historic U.S. Open at The Country Club. 
A hundred years later, their win at TCC remains the seminal moment in American golf history and Pave reminds us it was all a bit of an accident.
In his 1963 memoir, Lowery said it was “pure accident’’ that he caddied for Ouimet at the Open.
“My older brother Jack had caddied at Woodland Golf Club [in Newton] which was near our home and where Francis was then playing and Jack knew Francis,’’ he recalled. “We read in the paper about the two Englishmen — Vardon and Ray — who were going to play at Brookline.’’
The brothers arrived at The Country Club, and Ouimet asked Jack Lowery to be his caddie because the person he originally had engaged had hooked up with French professional Louis Tellier.
“So Jack caddied for Francis in the qualifying round and I went out to watch Vardon and Ray,’’ wrote Lowery, who along with his brother was caught by the truant officer and then given a stern lecture by their mother.
When Jack balked at caddying the next day, Eddie ran to the railroad station, hooked school, caught the last train to Brookline and subbed for his brother.
“I said to Francis, whatever you decide to do, you keep your head down and I will watch the ball. I have never lost a ball yet,’’ wrote Lowery, who went on to become caddie master at Woodland, a sportswriter for a Boston newspaper, and an advertising executive before moving to California.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
