Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)
This week the 2019 European Solheim Cup team was nominated – and rightly so – in the “Team of the Year” category in ‘The Sunday Times’ Sportswomen of the Year awards. Now, obviously, I’m wholly biased in thinking they should, indeed, get the award, but, come on, that Sunday afternoon will go down as one of the legendary afternoons in the history of, not only women’s golf, but golf in general. Like, that finish? With Bronte Law getting the win over Ally McDonald on 17, thus paving the way for Suzann Petterson, the wildest of wildcard picks, to be suddenly left facing a putt to win the whole damn thing, which she then proceeded to step up and drain?! I mean, if you saw it in a film you’d think it was a little much. Yet there it was. Unfolding before our very eyes. IN REAL LIFE.
But, upon seeing Catriona Matthew’s troops had received the nomination – combined with the fact I’m never not thinking about the Ryder Cup (and if you aren’t, I think you need to reevaluate your priorities) – the idea suddenly dawned on me, “What if a European team that was split between male and female golfers took on an equivalent U.S. team in a Ryder/Solheim Cup-type match?”.
So, for a special “What If?” article within ‘The Road to Wisconsin’ series, I decided to try and answer that “unanswerable” question by taking a look at how such a match might look and how it might play out.
Now, first thing’s first, we obviously need two teams. So, what you’ll see in the table below are, for the male component of each team, their top six players in the current World Rankings (which I thought was the fairest way to do it) and for the female component of each team, the top six players from this year’s Solheim Cup rankings. And it makes for pretty interesting reading:
| Team Europe | Team U.S.A. |
| Rory McIlroy | Brooks Koepka |
| Jon Rahm | Dustin Johnson |
| Justin Rose | Justin Thomas |
| Francesco Molinari | Tiger Woods |
| Paul Casey | Patrick Cantlay |
| Tommy Fleetwood | Xander Schauffele |
| Carlota Ciganda | Lexi Thompson |
| Anne Van Dam | Nelly Korda |
| Caroline Hedwall | Danielle Kang |
| Charley Hull | Lizette Salas |
| Georgia Hall | Jessica Korda |
| Azahara Muñoz | Megan Khang |
Like, I think we can all agree that those are two very strong looking teams. If you had to pick which looks stronger on paper, though? Then you’d probably say the Americans just about edge it – however, let’s be honest, whether it be the Ryder Cup or Solheim Cup, you can say that pretty much every two years when it comes to the Americans.
But, for argument’s sake, let’s just quickly delve into the makeup of the teams. On the American side, all six male players are inside the Top 10 in the world rankings; whilst of the female players, only one of the five, Megan Khang, is outside the Top 20 in the world rankings. I mean, that is an insane amount of talent to have at your disposal. Compare that, then, to their European counterparts … and we’re not quite as stacked from a rankings perspective. Of the men, all six are inside the Top 20 in the world, with McIlroy, Rahm and Rose inside the, currently ‘American-dominated’, Top 10. But as for the European women? Well, Ciganda is the only player currently inside the Top 20 in the world; Law, granted, is inside the Top 30 in 25th; Hall, Hull and Muñoz are all within sight of one another in 38th, 41st and 43rd respectively; whilst Van Dam and Hedwall aren’t so visible, with both of them sitting outside the Top 100 in the world. So, no matter what way you look at it that’s quite a difference.
Fortunately, however, as we all know, “World Rankings” mean absolutely squat when it comes to events like this, so we’ll fire on to the really fun part of all this – making the pairings for the two days of foursomes/fourballs, and arranging the Sunday singles. First and foremost, though, we need to sort out some details for how this hypothetical match might work:
(i) As we’re on ‘The Road to Wisconsin’, and the next Solheim Cup is going to be stateside, we’ll just say this match would be played in America; so, straight away the Americans would have an advantage before a ball is ever hit.
(ii) On each of the first two days, there’d be two sessions, a morning one and an afternoon one – pretty standard stuff. However, as the ‘Home Captain’ generally gets to pick the order in which formats are played (or at least they are in the Ryder Cup anyway) as a means of differentiating this match from both the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup, I think it would be cool to mix up the order for both days. So, on the Friday of the match it would be ‘fourballs’ in the morning and ‘foursomes’ in the afternoon, whilst on the Saturday we’d see ‘foursomes’ in the morning and ‘fourballs’ in the afternoon.
(iii) And, finally, in each of these sessions, the makeup of each pairing would be one male player and one female player, and they would just follow the standard format for how ‘fourballs’ and ‘foursomes’ are played in these kind of matches.
So, with that little bit of housekeeping out of the way, onto my pairings for the first day, Friday, and how I think those matches might have gone with every player being on top of their game – point winners are in bold:
| U.S.A | Friday Fourballs | Europe |
| Tiger Woods & Lexi Thompson | 1UP | Rory McIlroy & Carlota Ciganda |
| Brooks Koepka & Danielle Kang | 1UP | Jon Rahm & Azahara Muñoz |
| Patrick Cantlay & Nelly Korda | 2&1 | Tommy Fleetwood & Charley Hull |
| Xander Schauffele & Megan Khang | 3&2 | Justin Rose & Georgia Hall |
| 2 | – | 2 |
| U.S.A | Friday Foursomes | Europe |
| Dustin Johnson & Jessica Korda | 3&2 | Francesco Molinari & Anne Van Dam |
| Patrick Cantlay & Nelly Korda | 1UP | Jon Rahm & Carlota Ciganda |
| Justin Thomas & Lizette Salas | 2&1 | Paul Casey & Caroline Hedwall |
| Brooks Koepka & Danielle Kang | A/S | Justin Rose & Georgia Hall |
| 5½ | – | 2½ |
The morning fourballs were understandably tight, with no one wanting to make any mistakes, and that showed in the scoring as all four games went deep into the back nine in order to be decided. The standout pairing on the American side was Cantlay & Nelly Korda, whilst the all-English pairing of Rose & Hall shone brightest for Europe. The score was 2 points apiece heading into the afternoon.
As their quality of play had been threatening in the morning session, however, the Americans, in front of a red-hot home crowd, dominated the afternoon foursomes with some really strong pairings going out and putting a lot of red on the board early on. Both captains got their remaining players out onto the course in order to get used to the atmosphere (Tiger & Schauffele sat out for the Americans, with McIlroy & Fleetwood doing likewise for Europe) though, unsurprisingly, the pairings of Cantlay & Korda and Rose & Hall made a repeat appearance in the afternoon session. And, as it happened, the latter of those two pairings, Rose & Hall, ended up getting a valuable half point against the formidable Koepka & Kang in the final game of the session with a win on 18 thanks to a long birdie putt from Rose, and, as a result, prevented the Americans from securing a whitewash. Regardless, however, the Americans headed into Saturday with a 3 point lead and were looking strong.
The Saturday pairings:
| U.S.A | Saturday Foursomes | Europe |
| Dustin Johnson & Jessica Korda | 2&1 | Rory McIlroy & Charley Hull |
| Patrick Cantlay & Nelly Korda | A/S | Jon Rahm & Azahara Muñoz |
| Xander Schauffele & Megan Khang | 2&1 | Tommy Fleetwod & Anne Van Dam |
| Justin Thomas & Danielle Kang | 3&2 | Francesco Molinari & Caroline Hedwall |
| 7 | – | 5 |
| U.S.A | Saturday Fourballs | Europe |
| Tiger Woods & Lizette Salas | 3&2 | Justin Rose & Georgia Hall |
| Brooks Koepka & Lexi Thompson | 2&1 | Paul Casey & Azahara Muñoz |
| Dustin Johnson & Jessica Korda | 1UP | Tommy Fleetwood & Anne Van Dam |
| Justin Thomas & Danielle Kang | 3&2 | Rory McIlroy & Charley Hull |
| 9 | – | 7 |
Though the Americans still lead at the end of Saturday’s play, the deficit facing Europe was now just 2 points heading into the Sunday Singles after a strong showing in the morning foursomes saw them claim that session 2½ points to 1½. The decision to rest McIlroy & Fleetwood for Friday’s afternoon session paid dividends for the European team, with both of them coming away with 2 full points after finding a great connection with their respective partners, Hull & Van Dam. A big plus for the Americans, however, was a strong looking Tiger (who sat out Friday’s afternoon session and Saturday’s morning session) coming out and, along with his partner, Lizette Salas, knocking off the unbeaten Rose & Hall 3&2. As per usual in matches like these, it was all to play for heading into the singles, though it was most certainly still ‘advantage America’.
The Sunday singles:
| U.S.A | Sunday Singles | Europe |
| Brooks Koepka | 2&1 | Rory McIlroy |
| Nelly Korda | 3&2 | Carlota Ciganda |
| Justin Thomas | A/S | Jon Rahm |
| Lexi Thompson | 2&1 | Caroline Hedwall |
| Dustin Johnson | 1UP | Justin Rose |
| Danielle Kang | 2&1 | Anne Van Dam |
| Tiger Woods | 4&3 | Paul Casey |
| Jessica Korda | 2&1 | Georgia Hall |
| Patrick Cantlay | 1UP | Francesco Molinari |
| Lizette Salas | 3&2 | Azahara Muñoz |
| Xander Schauffele | A/S | Tommy Fleetwood |
| Megan Khang | 3&2 | Charley Hull |
| 15 | – | 13 |
Though they fought bravely, in the end the Europeans were unable to turn over enough of the singles and, with both teams splitting the session 6 apiece, the Americans ended up winning the match by the 2 point margin they brought into the final day. The American Captaincy front-loaded their order with a view to getting points on the board early, whilst those wearing the earpieces on the European side somewhat ‘bookended’ theirs with some of their stronger performers from the first two days. And, in fairness, though that strategy nearly paid off for the Europeans, with their charges claiming an impressive 3½ points from the final 4 games, when the Americans managed to grab 5½ points from the first 8 matches, the engraver, realistically, could have all but gotten to work.
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So, there you have it, if that match – with those two teams and with every player on top of their game – were being played in the morning somewhere out in America, I’d have the Americans just about taking the trophy home. In reality, though, with something like this it’s just as plausible to think the Americans could also be whitewashed in each of the sessions over the first two days and the match is wrapped up come tea-time on Saturday evening; there’s just no way of knowing how it would really go without those twenty-four players actually suiting up, heading out onto a golf course and going toe-to-toe with one another.
which was presented by Modest! Golf Management
And can you imagine just how much of an occasion that would actually be? To see some of the world’s best male and female golfers teaming up and competing in the pressure cooker-like environment of a Ryder/Solheim Cup-type match? Like, you couldn’t ask for a better medium through which to grow the game – you just couldn’t.
Now, will we ever actually see it? To be honest, I genuinely think that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I mean, when you look at the recent announcement of the ‘Scandinavian Mixed’ event which is going to be played next year, along with events like the ‘European Golf Team Championships’, ‘Jordan Mixed Open’, ‘ISPS Handa Vic Open’ and ‘ISPS Handa World Invitational’, the idea of male and female professional golfers competing, not only on the same course together, but actively with and against one another is becoming so wonderfully normalised that, a few years from now, there’s no reason why we couldn’t be looking forward to a “mixed” intercontinental team event.
And if it does, indeed, end up happening?
Bags being first captain of the European team.
I CALLED IT.