SOLHEIM MEMORIES
After spending the weekend covering the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and watching the players battle through two different formats as a team, I thought it might be a good time to share a couple of my favorite Solheim Cup memories.
Just making the inaugural U.S. team in 1990 as the last player to earn the necessary points is a highlight, but what I will NEVER forget is the walk to the first tee on Day 1 Foursomes (alternate shot) with my partner, Cathy Gerring, a spitfire who was loaded with confidence and playing some of the best golf of her career.
Cathy was simply too nervous to hit the first tee shot. We had practiced all week, with Cathy playing off the odd- numbered holes and me off the evens. Never once did we consider having me play the tee shot at the first! But when your partner suddenly has a meltdown less than 10 minutes before your tee time, you step up. We both played terrific after getting beyond that speed bump and won the match over Liselotte Neumann and Pam Wright by a margin of 6&5, putting the first point on the board for the American side in Solheim Cup history.
Another memory wasn’t even on the golf course. During the 1998 matches at Muirfield Village GC in Dublin, Ohio, we caught a week of hot, dry weather … abnormally hot ... and the uniforms chosen for the team were for decidedly cooler weather. By Saturday night we had run out of short-sleeved shirts for the Sunday singles competition. U.S. Captain Judy Rankin had a plan. All of the team members had a white shirt that we had worn in a practice round earlier in the week. They brought them to our rental house (Brandie Burton and I were staying in that house with Judy and her husband, Yippy), where we washed and ironed each one. It was a quiet time with a purpose for the whole team. We enjoyed a resounding victory less than 24 hours later.
And my final note here … about a seemingly obscure second-shot layup in the alternate shot format at the 1994 matches at the Greenbrier in West Virginia by my partner, Brandie Burton. Ideally, you do the math to lay your partner up to their favorite yardage. Brandie knew my numbers were either 100 or 75 yards. Controlled wedge numbers; no big deal. We’d done this MANY times before. Somehow her 5 wood to “lay up” went full-nuclear — total adrenaline — leaving me with a third shot that was nearly impossible to a hole cut on the very front of the green — a shot of less than 30 yards. We still talk about that “lay up” and laugh like crazy. Oh, and we went on to win that match, too.
