The putts wouldn’t fall, the chants of “Olé, Olé, Olé” were few and the Europeans find themselves in a deep hole early at the Solheim Cup.
The home team, seeking its first three-peat in the competition, got off to a slow start at Finca Cortesin in Casares, Spain, and now enters Day 1 fourballs trailing the U.S., 4-0.
Here’s a look at how the morning foursomes (alternate shot) played out Friday morning.
Lexi Thompson/Megan Khang (U.S.) def. Maja Stark/Linn Grant (EUR), 2 and 1
U.S. captain Stacy Lewis expressed her faith in Thompson, who has struggled to her worst year as a pro, by sending her out first, alongside Khang. The duo responded by winning the first three holes of their match against the Swedish rookies.
Stark and Grant fought their way back into a tie by winning hole Nos. 6, 11 and 13 with birdies, but a 10-foot birdie by Thompson at the par-4 15th gave the U.S. a 1-up lead with three to play.
Though Grant kept the Euros alive with a lengthy birdie putt to tie the 16th, the Americans matched Europe’s par on 17 to seal the match.
Danielle Kang/Andrea Lee (U.S.) def. Celine Boutier/Georgia Hall (EUR), 1 up
Boutier and Hall went 3-0 as a team in 2019 but just 0-0-1 in ’21, and they are now 0-1-0 this time around.
The Euros led, 1 up, through eight holes, but the U.S. won Nos. 9 and 10 to regain the advantage. The back-and-forth match continued with Boutier and Hall winning the 12th and the U.S. was in trouble at the 13th, before Kang made a massive birdie putt to tie the hole.
With the match still knotted through 16 holes, the Americans came up clutch with a birdie at the par-3 17th to take a 1-up lead, which would hold after both teams made par at the closing hole.
Nelly Korda/Allisen Corpuz (U.S.) def. Leona Maguire/Anna Nordqvist (EUR), 1 up
This was the only match that didn’t start well for the U.S., with Korda hooking her opening tee shot into the lake that guards the front of the first green. The Americans would lose the opening hole, but quickly bounced back with wins at Nos. 3-5.
Leading 1 up at the turn, Korda and Corpuz did enough to hold off the veteran Nordqvist and the scrappy Maguire. Korda’s tee shot on the par-3 17th offset Maguire’s long birdie putt, and the final hole was halved with pars to give the Americans a narrow victory in the final match on the course. It wrapped up a clean sweep for the U.S. in foursomes for the first time in Solheim Cup history.
Ally Ewing/Cheyenne Knight (U.S.) def. Charley Hull/Emily Pedersen (EUR), 5 and 4
This was the final match of the session, but the first to finish. The veteran duo of Hull and Pedersen struggled mightily, losing holes to par and tying holes with bogey.
Ewing, a three-time Cupper, and Knight, a rookie, won six of the first nine holes before the Euros got their only hole win, at the 10th. It was an easy triumph for the U.S. to earn the first points of the 18th edition of the matches,
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