The Solheim Cup shaping as another tight contest
The USA side – image Ladies European Tour
It may not involve players from our region, but there is little doubting the interest created here in the Australasian region by the Solheim Cup, which, like its male counterpart (The Ryder Cup), has developed into one of the more competitive and fascinating battles in world sport.
This week sees the 20th edition of the event between the USA and European female golfers, first played in 1990, and while eight of the first eleven encounters went to the seemingly more powerful Americans, the Europeans have balanced the ledger to a great extent by winning four and sharing the honours in five of the last eight stagings of the event.
This week, the Americans will again hold the advantage in terms of world ranking strength, but as the European Ryder Cup team has shown over the last 40 years at least, rankings on paper count for little in the fierce contest that has developed between the two teams.
Nine of the USA side are inside the top 50 in the Rolex World Ranking, while only five of the Europeans are in that category, although it is in the last few players of each team where the discrepancy becomes even more obvious in the favour of the Americans.
That the event is to be contested on what is essentially home soil for the Europeans, the partisan European crowd in Bernardus in the Netherlands will ensure some of that imbalance in rankings is reduced.
The event is played over three days, with Fourball and Foursome matches played on each of the first two days, and 12 Singles matches played on day three for a total of 28 points.
The European side – image – Ladies European Tour
