“Easy,” Lewis said of making her picks. “And a lot of it I think is probably more the stats and more the preparation that we had done prior to this week. Because they don’t know this — I have really been set on them for quite a few weeks now.”

The decision tree was trimmed in part due to Jessica Korda’s injury — and pregnancy — that removed the three-time veteran from consideration, leaving the only potential choice being taken care of when Andrea Lee supplanted Lexi Thompson for the final points spot at last week’s Canadian Open.

Lewis has five rookies on the roster, with Knight joining Lee, Rose Zhang, Allisen Corpuz and Lilia Vu as the US try to stop Europe from three-peating for the first time amid a run of the Americans losing four of the last six Solheim Cups.

“These five, they are rookies, but they are so experienced, just as far as the amount of golf they have been able to play,” Lewis said. “Rose [Zhang] is the only true rookie, but she’s probably got [more] experience than a lot of us combined, in big events, that is. So not worried about the rookies at all to be honest, and I love having Lexi, Danielle [Kang], those that have been around and played a lot. We are going to rely on them quite a bit just for behind the scenes and leading the way there.”

With an inexperienced roster including only two players in Kang and Thompson that have won previous Cups, here’s everything you need to know about Lewis’ picks with three weeks remaining until the matches are held at Finca Cortesin in Andalucia, Spain.

Ally Ewing

Ally Ewing. Chloe Knott/R&A

This will be the third Solheim Cup for the 30-year-old, her debut coming in 2019 as an injury replacement for Lewis. The three-time LPGA winner, most recently at the 2022 Kroger Queen City Championship last September, has consistently been at the top of leaderboards this summer, with four top-11 finishes in her previous seven starts. Earlier this month she had a five-stroke 36-hole lead at the AIG Women’s Open before settling for a T-6 finish. Ewing’s Solheim record is 2-5-1.

Cheyenne Knight

The fifth rookie for Lewis’ squad, Knight got her second LPGA victory in the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in July, a two-person team event. The 26-year-old has multiple ties to Lewis, both growing up in The Woodlands, Texas, as well as Knight winning the 2012 KPMG Stacy Lewis Junior Girls Open as an amateur. Knight finished 11th on U.S. points list. She is 12th this season in driving accuracy (80.5 percent)—one of four U.S. team members hitting over 80 percent of fairways, alongside Corpuz (82.5 percent), Lee (81.6 percent) and Khang (80.6 percent.)

Angel Yin

Angel Yin. Stacy Revere

Yin, like Ewing, also has played in two previous Solheim Cups (2017 and 2019). She surged onto the Solheim radar with a playoff loss at the Chevron Championship in April. She is the only golfer on the U.S. team without an LPGA victory, but has been a consistent player in the 2023 campaign, posting nine top-30s over 13 starts this year. Yin’s career Solheim record is 3-2-1.

US Solheim Cup Full Roster
Lilia Vu
Nelly Korda
Allisen Corpuz
Megan Khang
Jennifer Kupcho
Danielle Kang
Andrea Lee
Lexi Thompson
Rose Zhang
Ally Ewing
Cheyenne Knight
Angel Yin

The post Ewing, Knight and Yin are in as Stacy Lewis completes her US Solheim Cup line-up appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Don’t stop reading because you think you’ve heard this one before. Although you have. Just last month, in fact, when Brian Harman, a proud son of the American south, turned the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool into little more than a one-horse race that for long enough had only one, almost certain conclusion.

Welcome to the AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath, where Mississippi State alum Ally Ewing is 10-under at the halfway stage and as many as five-shots clear of her nearest challengers, compatriot Andrea Lee, Minami Katsu of Japan and home hope Charley Hull. So far at least, we’re all watching something akin to “Harman II: the sequel.”

Four-under par overnight and already holding a one-stroke advantage over the rest of the 144-strong field, Ewing wasted little time in stretching her lead. A front-nine 30 was capped by four straight birdies, and two more dips under par on the back-nine par 5s saw her reach 11-under with one hole to play. It was there that her first really wayward tee-shot led to what was her second missed green of the day and her only dropped shot, still good enough for a six-under 66.

Save for this one lone wayward driving ending up in Walton Heath’s heather, Ally Ewing played a meticulous second round, shooting a six-under 66 to reach 10 under and stretch out a five-shot 36-hole lead. Richard Heathcote/R&A

“I left myself in good position off the tee for the most part of the day except for 18,” said the 30-year-old three-time LPGA winner. “So I was able to hit really good iron shots into the greens and give myself a lot of ‘looks’. Not all of them were super-straight. I rolled in some breaking putts. Matching the line and speed is always a confidence boost. It was a very solid day. I didn’t really even know until I signed my scorecard that I had four birdies in a row. That stretch from like six to 11 is kind of a blur. I was very in the present on all of those shots.”

Still, it is not her fine play that will dominate headlines in the British press. During his run to Open glory, Harman revealed his liking for hunting, specifically pigs, turkeys and elks. So, given Ewing’s southern upbringing, it was inevitable that the subject was going to come up. And it did.

“I actually do some hunting,” Ewing said. “I know that’s probably not going to be interpreted well by the media, but I do, yes. I think people can spin it the wrong way for sure. It’s a means to eat for sure. For the most part my family, my husband and I, we do mostly deer hunting. That’s most of what we do.”

More positively, Ewing was also quizzed on her daily battle with Type 1 diabetes, something she discovered soon after first earning her LPGA card in 2016.

“It’s tough,” she admitted. “Some days are tougher than others, but it’s manageable. The technology has progressed a long way. But it is still something I have to be aware of on a course, not just my golf, which can sometimes be a little distracting. I deal with high blood sugar, low blood sugar. That’s why I have to stay on top of it. I can feel pretty loopy. I can feel shaky. It honestly changes every time. Sometimes I feel fatigued all of a sudden. So I keep Gatorade in my golf bag, take six ounces or so and stay on top of my snacks.”

As you’d expect, Ewing’s fellow competitors were united in their praise of her outstanding performance.

“I looked up at the scoreboard and she was five-under through five holes,” said Jodi Ewart-Shadoff, who is seven shots back. “And the next time I looked up she was 10-under through 11. I was not expecting that. But props to her. That’s an incredible round.”

The best response, however, belonged to Angel Yin, who is on three-under par after a second-round 69. Asked what course her fellow American was playing, Yin came back with: “Not this one”.

The post The AIG Women’s Open is resembling the runaway at Hoylake, with Ally Ewing playing the role of Brian Harman appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Ally Ewing reacts after making birdie on the 12th green during the final round of the Kroger Queen City Championship.. Dylan Buell
By Keely Levins

The LPGA Tour’s inaugural Kroger Queen City Championship saw a pro who has struggled this season breakthrough for her third LPGA Tour victory. Ally Ewing played the last seven holes in five-under to hold off a charging Xiyu Lin at Kenwood Country Club in Cincinnati. Ewing’s four-round total of 22-under was good for a one-shot victory over Lin. Ewing, 29, is the fifth American to win on the LPGA in 2022.

Watch highlights below:

[parone_video_player campaign=”491″ defaultlang=”en” feed=”51-all-videos”/]

Ewing first made herself known on the international professional golf stage when she was a late sub for an injured Stacy Lewis at the 2019 Solheim Cup. Then playing under her maiden name, McDonald, the All-American at Mississippi State went 1-3-0 in Scotland. Though she didn’t score many points for Team USA, it was her arrival on the big stage.

The next season, Ewing won the LPGA Drive on Championship by a shot over Danielle Kang. In 2021, she won again. This time, at the Bank of Hope LPGA Match-Play over Sophia Popov. In the span of a few seasons, Ewing has gone from a relatively unknown pro to a three-season winner on tour. With the $262,500 winner’s cheque at Kroger, she breaks the $3 million mark in career earnings.

She’s only had one top-20 finish in a stroke-play event in 2022, and that was back in January. As Ewing’s worked through this difficult season, she says her husband, coaches and family have been her support system.

“They just keep drilling in me, It’s there. I promise it’s there. Just keep working at it. It’s there. And I just really trusted it and knew that if I kept working at it, it was going to be there,” Ewing said.

A bit of a breakthrough came in Canada when a change in her putting started to take hold. She shortened her backstroke a few weeks before the CP Women’s Open, and the change yielded a T-36 result. That was two weeks before the Kroger. Her game wasn’t exactly where she wanted it, but she could feel it was close.

“This week, I saw putts go in. Once I saw them go, I had that confidence,” Ewing said.

As Ewing celebrated in Cincinnati and hoisted the trophy, she felt the release of what was a tense day on the course.

“I struggled with nerves all day because I just haven’t been able to put this together for a full tournament this year,” Ewing said. “So, to see it and all the results finally come into place, it’s really exciting.”

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