Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Solheim Cup - An Appreciation

I promised you some bonus weekend blogging, and I'm at the keyboard to deliver thereon.  I thought the event was great, and several of our favorite ink-stained wretches agree.  

One of those writers is, of course, Geoff Shackelford, who devoted an entire Quadrilateral newsletter to the event, amusingly leading with a comparison to that soulless money grab in Atlanta:

The worst team match is better than 99% of stroke play.

That was confirmed again as the Solheim Cup proved far more compelling than the stale conclusion to the PGA Tour season.

It wasn’t a fair fight:
  • Match play over stroke play.
  • Passionate play over a net stroke play champioship.
  • Inverness over East Lake.
  • Cool season grasses full of contrast over East Lake’s grayish Bermuda.
  • Controversy over…no one caring enough anymore to even complain about the FedExCup format.

Yeah, I had it Solheim Cup 5&4.

Perhaps we should get the obvious parallels to the Ryder Cup out of the way early:


Though America had five of the top 17 players in the world to just one for Europe (No. 16 Anna
Nordqvist), it was the favored home team that always seemed to be playing from behind. At least that was the case after the first morning foursomes session on Saturday when Europe stole a late 1½ points for a three-point lead it never lost. The Americans never seemed to recover from that psychological blow, let alone the actual blow on the scoreboard.


“I think we got behind the eight-ball the very first foursomes, and that's just … we fought our way back,” U.S. captain Pat Hurst said. “It's still pretty close, but it's not good enough.”

“It's probably one of the best European teams I think I've seen,” said U.S. assistant captain Stacy Lewis, a four-time player. “They're just really, really a lot of great putters—not good putters, great putters—and when it's tight like that, it's a putt or two here and there.”

Last we visited with Stacey Lewis, she was making the case that the women are as good as the men, so good to know that motherhood hasn't tethered her any closer to reality.  This was far closer to the worst Euro team ever, at least to the extent that world rankings can measure such things.  

Not only was this Euro Team historically weak, but it was an away game on steroids:

In addition to America’s seeming advantage in the world rankings, the Europeans had to overcome a gallery that was more heavily in favor of the home team than years past. Though a
record 130,000 fans attended the matches, the usual contingent of European supporters didn’t make it to Inverness Club because of the ongoing pandemic and travel restrictions. And who knows how many more stayed away in anticipation of coming to the United States in a few weeks for the Ryder Cup in Wisconsin.

“We had to lean on each other this week, and I'm really proud of everyone for believing in themselves and for pulling through,” Nordqvist said.

“We knew it was going to be tough this year with really no European fans, and they just dug in deep,” Matthew added. “Especially yesterday even when the crowds were getting pretty wild, really hung in, came out with a great finish yesterday, and then today great to start with and then it kind of looked a little dodgy, but great play and just so proud of them.

Fortunately, fans of women's golf have not been encouraged to Live Under Par™ and, to the best of my knowledge, there were no screams of "Brooksie" all week.  We should only be so lucky in a couple of weeks...

Now, as I've noted previously, this event delivers for two principle reasons.  First and foremost is the power of the team match play format, that surpasses anything else in our game.  The second reason is the frisson of bad blood between the teams that has us awaiting the next rules or etiquette imbroglio, and we sure didn't have to wait long for that thanks to that thanks to Madelene Sagstrom and Nelly Korda.

Geoff continues his comparisons with that soulless money grab in extolling the restored Inverness:

🔥 Inverness was superb. Even without going against East Lake’s lifeless Reestoration(s), it would have hit a home run. But this year’s Solheim Cup play accentuated the vital role played by the course improvements. The putting surface expansions, unusual green shapes, and tricky slopes all asked players to pick a line, place an approach accurately, and work until their last putt.

That is, unless someone picked up your ball prematurely.

What a contrast to East Lake’s ovals that are also light on internal contouring.

The contrast in Donald Ross touches could not have been more evident. So it was a positive to have the events going head-to-head!

Inverness delivered the perfect performance by giving players the opportunity to display skill under pressure while the design played a key supporting role. Kind of like a key character actor who just adds some comic relief or necessary sophistication in an otherwise straightforward story.

He cites the tree removal as well, but this would seem to be the most important bit:

⛳️ Firm, seamless approaches are a beautiful thing. High rough is never ideal but it’s a lot more palatable when you have open entryways to propel the ball forward. It was a joy to watch players to use the approach and green contours to their advantage, and equally as satisfying to see shots bound through the greens by not landing it shorter.


I do wonder if the Europeans, more used to the ground game than the Americans, gained some advantage thanks to this feature of Inverness?

I won't even make you click through, here's the shot referenced above:

There is simply nothing more exciting in our game than watching the ball on the ground....

 I'm on record on this subject as well:

🔢 Don’t get cute with routings. Normally we get re-routings in team matches to accommodate corporate hospitality. They flipped Inverness’ 9th and 18th to make sure more matches played the club’s famed short-par 4 finisher. Naturally, a whopping nine matches went to the 18th before Sunday singles, where another four finished at the last hole.

Lesson to be learned: just leave the course as the architects designed them, please? Otherwise, the Golf Gods will screw with the “percentages” used to justify the switch.

As at Liberty National, it's usually justified by the concept of having every match play the best holes (whatever that might mean).  But I've always argued that the higher priority should be having the close matches decided on the best holes, because who cares if that 5&4 beatdown plays your signature hole?

Now I'll begin to work in some Alan Shipnuck from his latest mailbag feature:

The Solheim Cup was incredibly interesting. Should it happen every year? @robmillertime

Nah. One of the great things about these events is that the two-year gap allows for intrigue and interest to build. In a world of instant gratification, having to wait so long is torture, which makes each Solheim (and Ryder) Cup that much more delicious.

Well, the delay also makes each installment that much more important, and agonizing when you end up on the losing end.  But, yeah, that's exactly the point.

But the most underreported aspect of this great event has to be the woeful U.S. team, no?  You're supposed to win your home games, especially when you have the clearly superior roster.  Here's Dave Shedloski's kid-glove treatment from that first linked piece:

It didn’t help that arguably America’s four best players—Lexi Thompson, Danielle Kang, and Jessica and Nelly Korda— combined for only 5½ points. Thompson was 1-2-1, Kang 1-3-0 and the Kordas, unbeaten two years ago, were 1-2-0 and 2-2-0, respectively.

To say the least....  Nelly redeemed herself a bit in eking out that singles win, but when the best player on the planet is only 2-2, that's a problem.  But when you're depending upon Lexi, heartbreak is guaranteed.

By now you've learned how your humble blogger's mind is wired, and this from Alan's mailbag is spot on:

Now that the U.S. has lost two Solheim Cups in a row, should the women form a task force? @BobRoge321

I loved the spirit of this U.S. team, but the bottom line is the resumes of the bottom half of the squad are pretty thin: Brittany Altomare, Mina Harigae, Meghan Kang, Jennifer Kupcho and Yalimi Noh came into this Solheim with a combined zero LPGA wins, and Lizette Salas’s last victory came seven years ago. Some or even most of these players may mature into Solheim stalwarts, but you can’t hide that much inexperience. I don’t think structural changes are needed to the selection process; Team USA just has to get more talent in the pipeline. It would certainly help if the putative team leaders—the Kordas, Danielle Kang and Lexi Thompson—played better.

Exactly.  Thank God there's no woman on that team that can be as big an a*****e as Phil. so we're spared that nonsense.  But, just on the off chance that Phil is watching and taking notes, this is how you lose one of these things.  You congratulate the winners and you shut your pie hole...

This is a bit silly, as Alan makes clear:

Where has Leona Maguire been all these years? Amazing Solheim performance. #AskAlan
@GuyRWhitehead @dleect

Well, she spent 135 weeks atop the World Amateur Golf Ranking from 2015 to ’18. She won a couple of Symetra Tour events in 2019 to earn her place in the big leagues. Maguire (top) has had a bunch of good finishes on the LPGA Tour this year, including a T6 at the Evian, to crack the top 50 in the World Ranking. In short, she has slowly and steadily been building the career that has made her an overnight sensation.


It's true that she's been a little slower to get traction at the professional level than her amateur career might have portended, but it's not like this is from the blue.  The better question is whether this is a springboard for her individual career...

Zephyr Melton filed an engaging notebook dump from which I'll grab a few bits, this one focusing on one of those Big Four:

6. Solheim struggles

Danielle Kang didn’t have her best stuff in Toledo, evidenced by her 1-3-0 record, and after her Saturday foursome loss, she was out on the range grinding through a bag of balls. Being the intrepid reporter that I am, I wandered out to watch and try to see if I could figure out what she was ironing out. I kept my distance and took some videos from the shade while she and her caddie worked. But when Kang noticed me in the distance, she instructed her caddie to ask me to leave, so I took the opportunity to go cool off in the media center. We were both just trying to do our jobs, and sometimes that puts us at odds. Here’s to hoping she has a strong finish to the season.

Don't they call that journalism?  It's been so long I can hardly remember...

The only real point here is that American Women's Golf would have seemed to be on an uptick, what with four ladies qualifying for Tokyo and one of them grabbing the gold.  But this was really a devastating wake up call,  and eerily reminiscent of so many U.S. Ryder Cup no-shows.

So, we have a U.S. women's team that's prone to underperform and we have this off-year event that's never really found it's footing.  We're also overwhelmed by the woke mafia, so this from Geoff makes far too much sense to ever be allowed to happen:

🏆 Presidents Cup redo redux. The idea of reinvigorating the Presidents Cup by adding women came up after Golf Digest Joel Beall suggested a joint Ryder and Solheim Cup. I’d pass on that idea to spread the team match play wealth. But it was a reminder how a mixed Presidents Cup could feature 16 players on each side, advance the women’s game, and reinvigorate the PC.

This sure looks appealing, especially with a few mixed team sessions:

 

As a bonus, you can offer the ladies equal prize money....

OK, just a few more bits for you, including a couple that I liked from Zephyr's notebook:

1. Flag bearers

For each match at Inverness, there was a group of flag bearers following along with red and blue flags. Once shots were hit into the fairway, rough, bunker, etc., they would walk over and hold the corresponding flag in the air. It might seem trivial, but it made the live viewing experience MUCH easier. No more guesswork on whose ball was whose, or where a ball was when it was not visible from outside the ropes. This should be standard at every golf tournament.

Haven't seen it before, but if it enhances the live experience it should be a keeper.

I just liked this bit:

3. “You want me to sign what?”

Speaking of autographs, there were a few well-served patrons who had some interesting items to get signed. One fan made it his mission to get as many players as possible to sign his beer can. When I saw him coaxing Austin Ernst into giving her John Hancock on the empty vessel, he had quite the collection going. But worry not, he made sure not to allow his mission to interfere with the kiddos surrounding him. “Make sure you get to all the kids first, Austin. I’m just being silly.” Well done, sir.

I'm not a fan of drunken louts, but it does help when they have trace elements of self-awareness....

I'll close with a sobering note for all of us, the TV ratings from ShowBuzzDaily:


That middle column is the total viewership, the one to the right is adults aged 18-49.  These audience numbers are tiny to begin with, and miniscule when you carve out the old folks (though, really, who else is gonna buy the Cialis being hawked).  It was, in your humble blogger's opinion, a great event, yet not even a million people tuned in on Saturday or Sunday (I haven't seen ratings for Monday's singles, when they had no sports competition).

I'll leave you there and likely catch up on other golf news tomorrow.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)