TOLEDO, OHIO | The beauty of match play is that it doesn’t matter. You can make 7 on a par-3 and as long as your opponent makes 8, you win. There were no such numbers on display in the opening session of the Solheim Cup but there were a few 6s and more than a few holes won with pars.
The foursomes session concluded with Europe leading 3.5 to .5. But two things were evident. The matches were much closer than the final outcome. And Inverness Club was the ultimate winner.
Bubba Watson, still here with a radio in his pocket and a cheerleading spirit in his heart, said, “Move the tees around and this course could host a U.S. Open.” And Charlie Ewing, husband of Ally and the head golf coach at Mississippi State University, said, “This is the kind of golf course where you could set it up for an 8-under par win or an 8-over par win.”
Saturday morning at the Solheim Cup, it was somewhere in between.
The course was designed by Donald Ross in 1918 and renovated in 2016 by Andrew Green in an attempt to restore it to what Ross originally had in mind. For the architect geek, this one might be referred to as a Rossnor, a combination of Ross and Seth Raynor. When you look at the angles – the vertical grass lips on the bunkers, with sand as flat as a sheet of paper in the bottom, and greens with lots of movement – Inverness seems to have the best of the Golden Age of architecture. Standing in the fairways, some of the greens look like you’re trying to stop the ball on an upside-down coffee mug. So, it’s understandable that birdies in foursomes were hard to find.
The opening hole of the opening match, for example was halved with a bogey. That was Danielle Kang and Austin Ernst against Anna Nordqvist and Matilda Castren. That match went all the way to 18 with Nordqvist and Castren winning, 1 up. As exciting as it was – and it was a nail-biter to the end – the Americans won four holes with pars and the Europeans won two. Kang and Ernst made only two birdies.
In the second match, Ally Ewing and Megan Khang won four holes with pars, three on the front nine, and one with a birdie, while the European duo of Georgia Hall and Celine Boutier won four holes with pars, none bigger than the 18th where they clawed their way back from 2 down to halve the match and remain undefeated as a pairing.
Again, the golf was compelling. This wasn’t Saturday afternoon at Gleneagles when the wind howled, temperatures plummeted, and the golf was, to be polite, poor.
Mel Reid and Leona Maguire won the sixth hole with a bogey and halved the seventh with a bogey in their battle with the Korda sisters. That match also came down to the 18th where the Europeans won 1 up with, you guessed it, a par.
The most birdies of the morning came out of the final game. Lexi Thompson and Brittany Altomare won three holes with birdies and halved another in their thriller against Charlie Hull and Emily Pedersen, while Pedersen and Hull birdied 15, 16 and 18 to win the match, 1 up.
All four matches went the full 18 holes. So it was compelling, just as all the major events have been at Inverness Club.
But it wasn’t easy. Championship layouts rarely are.
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