GAINESVILLE, Va. – Lexi Thompson will get her Suzann Pettersen second Sunday.
Native turns into U.S. Solheim Cup hero with clinching putt.
Lilia Vu birdies closing two holes to provide People first Solheim Cup victory since 2017.
That’s the one. Print it.
Storylines modified by the shot on Sunday as digital leaderboards at Robert Trent Jones Golf Membership saved updating, altering the maths for what america wanted to prevail and what Europe wanted to outlive.
Fortuitously for the house crew, it didn’t want many factors within the singles session – simply 4½ of them. Thanks to 3 large wins early, it appeared not a matter of if the U.S. would win however how the situation would finally play out.
How the U.S. defeated Europe to win the nineteenth Solheim Cup at Robert Trent Jones GC.
Who would get that time or half-point to lastly finish the People’ Solheim Cup distress?
Talking of distress, U.S. captain Stacy Lewis was struggling. She was so shut and simply wanted somebody to shut it out.
“That was the longest hour and a half of my life, I’m not going to lie,” Lewis mentioned of the time between reaching 13 factors and eventually getting the requisite 14½.
Thompson would have been the right protagonist, and along with her positioning in the course of the lineup, it virtually felt anticipated that she’d ship that second. However when have issues gone as anticipated with Lexi? Three up via 11 holes, she misplaced, 1 up, to Celine Boutier. She had a 10-footer on the final that, at worst, would have earned a half-point and, at greatest, pressured Boutier into lacking her 5-footer.
Perhaps, simply perhaps, she’d make her putt, it will win the Solheim Cup, and she or he’d name it a profession. As an alternative, it slid sharply previous the appropriate edge, by no means threatening the opening.
Subsequent up was Lauren Coughlin, a Virginia native who had by no means received on tour till just lately after which managed to take action twice. She had a 15-footer that outright would have sealed it. It, too, missed.
That left one other avenue for a U.S. win as Europe’s Maja Stark, Coughlin’s opponent, had raced her 25-foot birdie putt 10 ft previous the opening. She needed to make that to maintain hope alive. Fortunately, she did as a result of nobody – particularly Stark – desires a narrative to start: Maja Stark missed a 10-foot putt to …
The tie, compounded with Andrea Lee’s earlier halve, put the U.S. at 14 factors.
“Half-points matter,” Coughlin mentioned after her match. “Throughout a crew dinner, the message was: Go get that half-point.”
Now somebody needed to a minimum of get a half-point extra, which proved to be Vu. Two down with two to play, Vu birdied the seventeenth. An ideal drive on the par-4 18th left Vu with a wedge in.
“It was 103 yards, serving to wind,” Vu described. “That’s really my least favourite quantity to hit, like a 90 [yard] shot downwind. However I simply needed to step as much as it. I knew I needed to hit it shut.”
Inside 2 ft.
Compelled to putt it to make victory official, Vu popped in probably the most nerve-wracking 18-incher of her life.
“It meant the world as a result of I actually felt right now that after I was form of letting myself get down, that I wasn’t doing something for this crew and didn’t see mild on the finish of the tunnel,” Vu mentioned. “After which I received to 2 down … after which was in a position to birdie 17 and 18. I don’t understand how. It simply occurred. I do know I regarded within the fairway to the leaderboard, noticed that we had been at 14 [points], so needed to get that half-point for us.”
Add in that Vu was sidelined earlier this 12 months with a again harm that has by no means totally healed, to the purpose the place she felt responsible competing this week whereas not 100%, solely emboldens her headline.
“To see Lilia pull off that shot in that second was simply actually, actually particular,” Lewis mentioned.
Vu’s putt set off a celebration the U.S. hasn’t been in a position to take pleasure in in seven years. Thompson was in tears (the nice sort). Coughlin and Vu had been every draped in American flags.
Previous captains had been hugging, the drinks had been beginning and out got here a caddie’s cry of utter aid: “F—ing lastly.”
Cease the presses! Now we have a greater headline.
