My step count barely registered on my phone over last Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t working at all.  It peaked (or troughed) on Monday at a massive 350 steps – and who knew sitting could be so exhausting that it’s taken me the rest of the week to recover?  Actually, I wasn’t just sitting – I was immersed in every putt, chip and swing of the two teams vying to win the 17th edition of the Solheim Cup, played at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.  All the shouting at the television was worth it in the end, however, as Europe battled to a 15-13 victory to win for only the second time on American soil.

Catriona Matthew has now achieved God-like status for being the first European captain to win successive matches and, so far at any rate, she has sensibly declined to lead the side for a third term.

This was a match that Europe had no right to win.  It’s notoriously difficult to win on foreign soil in normal times and the visiting side were without their friends, families and faithful Solheim Cup supporters because of ever present travel restrictions regarding the States.  Perhaps it made the small number of Europeans an even more cohesive unit, if that were possible, but there’s no doubt the Americans will go away scratching their heads and wondering what kind of sorcery goes on in European team rooms at Ryder and Solheim Cups.

I mean, blending and moulding  EIGHT different nationalities (ten, if you count the captain and assistant captains) should be akin to solving a fiendish sudoku but Europe seemingly have the key to unlocking these mysteries. The Americans will be sick to death of hearing about European team spirit and suggestions that there is a magic formula that they are lacking.  There’s one sure thing, though – the more they try to come up with their own “magic formula” for success the more elusive it’ll become.

You will forgive me for confirming there was much joy in this household over Leona Maguire’s spellbinding display and seemingly bottomless well of grit and resolve into which she dipped to enable yet another clutch putt to find the bottom of the hole.  We have waited 31 years to have an Irish player in the blue and gold colours of Europe in the Solheim Cup and it certainly proved worth the wait.  Just imagine – four and a half points out of five, a feat never before achieved by a European rookie.  (Caroline Hedwall won all five of her matches in Colorado in 2013, on her second appearance.)

At this point I would like to sound a note of appreciation for everyone in the country who has ever had anything to do with Irish golf – and girls’ golf in particular.  By that I mean all the volunteers who have run junior sections at their clubs;  the parents who have criss-crossed the country taking their little ones to club matches, scratch cups and the like;  and the governing body who have grown into a tour de force in delivering world-class coaching programmes.  Over the decades great Irish players have been nurtured, winning first at home, then abroad.  Eventually these class individuals were backed up by strength in depth and team victories on the international stage appeared.  After that it was forays into college golf in America, then the Ladies’ European Tour, then the LPGA and now Leona has taken us all to new heights.  All along the way there have been inspiring people and players that sowed a seed of ambition for the next generation and so it has gone on.

I can’t help but think back to my own early days at Portstewart and Portrush and the junior sessions run by one of the members, Dorothy Glendinning.  It was her encouragement to me to swing at a daisy with my 9-iron and not spend the WHOLE time making daisy chains that created a spark in me for this sport that lives on to this day.  And, of course, we will never know the sheer grind of the thousands of hours put in by Leona herself to bring her to this point, but, as well as paying tribute to her, I want to pay tribute to generations of people who have given time and effort to the game they love, with no thought of reward.

Leona stands on the shoulders of many, many people which is one of the reasons the entire country is bursting with collective pride in her accomplishments.

I don’t suppose that for Catriona Matthew anything could surpass captaining the Europeans to victory last time out in her home country but this must surely come awfully close.  It’s also possibly the first time ever that women’s golf has gone head to head over a similar time frame with an important men’s golf event and merited the lion’s share of the attention.  In case it escaped your notice, the culmination of the PGA Tour season took place with the final event of the play-offs resulting in Patrick Cantlay pocketing $15 million.  Honestly, I hardly noticed, so captivating, so all-encompassing was the Solheim Cup – and that’s even allowing for the poor television production from the American host broadcasters.

Two talented, evenly-matched teams were showcased at The Inverness Club; the spotlight settled on the Europeans at the end of three glorious days; and there, centre stage, drinking it all in, head and shoulders above all the rest, was Leona Maguire.

Simply the best.

Golf, like life, moves on apace but the blog makes no apologies for giving top billing (twice) to Europe’s stunning, stupendous, scintillating Solheim victory.  Maureen and I are still exhausted (and I’m ashamed to say I’ve yet to see a shot hit in anger by teen tennis sensation Emma Raducanu, who is taking the US Open by storm with an insouciance and joie de vivre that would impress Leona Maguire).

Maguire, the pride of Ballyconnell and Slieve Russell in county Cavan, was the undoubted star of a European team that shone so brightly that they eclipsed the much vaunted Americans, world No 1 Nellie Korda, her sister Jessica, Lexi Thompson, Lizette Salas and all – and kept the ever enthusiastic, would be noisy Toledo fans pretty quiet.  The chants of “USA, USA” sounded few and far between and were never sustained, smacking more and more of desperation as the Europeans refused to crumble.

It was tight and tense the longer the singles went on but Matilda Castren, a rookie from Finland (like Maguire the first from her country to make the team) saw off Salas with a seemingly nerveless putt to win on the last and in the anchor match Emily Pedersen, a Dane whose Solheim (and golfing) journey of redemption deserves a book of its own, beat Danielle Kang by one hole (having clinched Europe’s win when she went three up with three to play).

This is as good – or bad – a place as any to have my habitual rant about the inequity of the defending champions being given a half point start.  To retain the trophy they’d won at Gleneagles, Europe needed to reach 14 points; to win the USA needed 14 1/2.  And so, in reality, for their own satisfaction, did the Europeans.  It’ll be happening again at Whistling Straits later this month when Europe defend the Ryder Cup they won in such style in Paris in 2018.  That’s three years ago, for goodness sake.  And even if it were the usual two, why? oh why? does a side deserve a start?  It doesn’t make sense.  Historical?  It’s a tradition that should be history.  Ditched.  Done away with once and for all.  It deserves a bad rap.  Cue Bubba!

The great thing about the Solheim Cup and the Ryder Cup nowadays is that you have to win it, you don’t get given it.  There’s no just turning up and walking away with the trophy.  It’s a proper contest, a match between equals, always liable to be close.  Every now and again a team runs away with it but mostly it’s nip and tuck – as it turned out to be at the Inverness Club, with 16 of the 28 matches (by my count) going to the last hole.  Nerves are going to be shredded, players (and fans) emotionally exhausted by the end.

The bottom line is that losing stinks.  Winning is so much more fun.

Let’s hope that Padraig Harrington, who’ll be finalising his Ryder Cup team after this week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, has players who putt as well in Wisconsin as Maguire and her teammates did in Toledo.  They were led impeccably by Catriona Matthew, the lowkey, legendary Scot from North Berwick who inspires with a quiet authority and has the utmost respect of every single player.  Also, in a humorous nod to the venue’s roots, the Europeans had a cheeky Loch Ness monster on the bottom of their golf bags….One up from the start, surely.

Matthew paired the rookie Maguire (in reality a mature 26-year old with a stellar college career at Duke behind her) with the sometimes tempestuous Englishwoman Mel Reid, a lover of the free-flowing fist pump.  They didn’t know each other at all beforehand but what looked initially like an odd couple proved a marriage made in heaven and they gelled beautifully, winning three of their four matches together and  halving the other.  Reid restrained her celebrations, leaving most of the fierce fist pumps to her more naturally stoic partner, who hardly missed a putt over the three days.

So impressive was Maguire that musician Sam Harrop (@sam_golf on Twitter), described by The Times as “golf’s premier parodist”, has written an ode about her already.  It’s quite brilliant and includes lines like “A debut from the Hall of Fame…Golf’s an oyster and we’ve found a pearl” but the rhyme de resistance has to be:  “She’s from county Ca-van (American pronunciation), she’s not gonna tan…”  Classic.

It cracked me up because I remember seeing Leona and her twin sister Lisa at the Junior Solheim in America and knew immediately who they were because they had little milk bottle legs, white as white in amongst the tanned pins of their teammates.  The DWD (dog-walking dermatologist) tells me that most of us Irish have such pale skin to help us absorb as much vitamin D as possible from our (normally) watery sunshine.  Forgive me if I haven’t quite grasped the science, we were playing bridge at the time and I was losing tricks hands over fist.

The Solheim Cup shopping list.  It’s not likely to change for the Ryder Cup.

Finally, congratulations to Co. Cavan on winning the AIG Men’s Jimmy Bruen Shield for the first time, defeating Gowran Park at Shandon Park in Belfast.  Conor O’Reilly, a member of the winning team, said, “It means so much to our club.  We’re 128 years old and it was our first All-Ireland final.

“It’s been a great week for golf in Cavan.  Leona doesn’t have a Jimmy Bruen though!”

 

Why is this an historical year in golf?  Answers please on a postcard…….

It should be an easy question to answer for those of you who have clocked that there appears to be a great deal of team matchplay in the scheduling at the moment.  The sister and I are fresh from watching the Curtis Cup at Conwy Golf Club and as you read this we will be readying ourselves for the three day fest that is the Solheim Cup.  And, no sooner will we have finished biting our nails to the quick over the Solheim than we will be limbering up for the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.  And, one final clue – we also enjoyed watching the Walker Cup, played at Seminole in early May, even though it was largely a closed door event because of the pandemic.

And there you have it.  The answer to my opening question is that this is the first time ever that the four major team events in golf have been played in the same year.  The Walker Cup and the Ryder Cup always used to be in odd-numbered years but following the atrocities of 9/11 the Ryder Cup was postponed for a year and then assumed an even-numbered-year slot, usually in September.  This was awkward for the Solheim Cup already occupying that date in the calendar and, realising they couldn’t compete with the men for media attention (at that time), the women swiftly altered to the odd-numbered years.  And then last year the Ryder Cup had to be postponed twelve months because of  COVID-19, hence the logjam of top-class team matchplay that we are now enjoying.

So far this year the Americans have been dominant, edging the win in Seminole by two points and then last week in Wales their women came storming back from a poor opening day to stamp their authority on the Conwy links.  The Curtis Cup was a beautifully run event by the R&A and the small contingent of Americans who were able to make the trip were recipients of a very warm, Welsh welcome, as were we.

The course was stunning and only the merest of zephyrs teased the players during the three days of competition.  It was a particular treat to watch Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck at close quarters, the players ranked respectively No 1 and No 2 in the world.  Zhang was the class act of the week, winning four and a half points out of five but the home side’s Caley McGinty was very impressive in putting three and a half points on the board for GB and I, which included the only singles victory for her team.  At college at Oklahoma State, Caley has won three times stateside and she was certainly the best wedge player I saw throughout the week.  It’ll be fun to follow her progress.

Elaine Ratcliffe and Sarah Ingram, the two captains. were delighted to renew their friendly rivalry, having played in the 1996 match at Killarney, won by GB and I.  In fact, they played head to head in the singles with Ratcliffe coming out on top.  This time it was Sarah hoisting the trophy with her team and celebrating the fact that North Carolina’s Rachel Kuehn had scored the winning point – just as her mother, Brenda Corrie Kuehn had done in 1998 at Minikahda in Minnesota.  That’ll surely provide another special photo for the family album.

Many of the 16 players at Conwy will eventually try their hand on the professional scene and they will be adding the goal of making their respective Solheim Cup teams to their to-do lists.  This year there are four players from the home nations on Catriona Matthew’s European team and all of them played in the Curtis Cup in their amateur days.

Leona Maguire is the most recent player to bridge this gap having participated in the 2016 Curtis Cup match in Ireland, a gap of five years before graduating to the Solheim Cup.  Mel Reid played in the 2006 Curtis Cup encounter and then the 2011 Solheim Cup team, an identical five-year span between teams.  Georgia Hall was a little quicker off the mark taking only three years, 2014 to 2017 but none can better the rapid progress of Charley Hull who was part of the GB and I victory in the Curtis Cup at Nairn in 2012 and then on the winning European Solheim Cup team at Colorado in 2013.

Half of the US team are Curtis Cup graduates with Mina Harigae, one of this year’s rookies, having played the Curtis Cup back in 2008.  Compared to Hull she has had more of a slow burn of a career but nevertheless after thirteen years she gets to pull on the red, white and blue of America again.  In my experience it’s a rare player who would trade the opportunity to represent their country and their continent in these high profile, transatlantic clashes for individual successes, which is very refreshing in what is essentially a very self-centred sport.

So, two down and two more trophies to play for.  The featured picture at the top of the post is just to remind all of us on this side of the Atlantic what one of our own winning teams looks like.  We all know away victories are notoriously hard to come by but hope springs eternal that we can win the Solheim and the Ryder Cups, squaring the series, so to speak.  In any case, I’m looking forward to the next three days and the prospect of watching tremendous golf, gracious sportsmanship and a glorious, nail-biting finish.

Whatever the result, 2021 will go down as an historic year.