By Shane Ryan
JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — With a single shot, a 7-wood from 243 yards, that left her with a tap-in eagle on the fifth hole, Nelly Korda effectively defeated the entire field at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship … save for one. The last woman standing in the way of Korda’s first major—and the validation of the 22-year-old’s status as the game’s next great player—was the one who had gone toe to toe with her all week while the rest of the contenders dropped one by one, unable to maintain the torrid pace. Lizette Salas was coming off a year from hell, having fought mental-health issues, and she had played all weekend like a woman restored. This wasn’t a championship she would give up easily, particularly after her last close call at a major, when she fell by a single shot to Hinaki Shibuno at the 2019 Women’s British Open. On Friday and Saturday, while Korda battered Atlanta Athletic Club with a relentless onslaught, her game looking bogey-proof at worst, Salas held on like a terrier, putting together a brilliant front-nine 30 on Saturday and holding on for dear life after.

In the end, though, the cream rose, and the killing blow came on another par-5, the 12th, where a massive drive set up a 6-iron from 173 yards that crawled mere feet over the water guarding the green, landed softly and set up another short eagle putt that she converted. (Later, Korda admitted she chunked the shot, and it was fortunate that after some debate with her caddie Jason McDede she’d opted for the longer club.) Salas blundered her third shot, finding the back bunker on a short approach, and by the time she made bogey, the one-shot margin had become four. Korda, at 20 under, followed up that eagle with a textbook par at 13, a birdie at 14, and it was like the wind came out of Salas’ sails at last. She continued to fight, but how do you maintain faith when your opponent simply has no flaws? You could say that Korda was too good, or you could say that the tournament was about eight holes too long for Salas, who simply couldn’t play that far above her head on a scorching Sunday outside Atlanta. In both cases, you’d be right.

If at times this felt like watching only the parts of Rocky IV where Ivan Drago robotically annihilates all his opponents, it’s worth noting that Korda herself opened up on her struggles with pressure in the past few weeks, inspired by similar comments from Bubba Watson and Matthew Wolff. After missing the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open earlier this month, golf no longer seemed fun to her, and she knew a mental change was in order. It’s not an instant fix—she had fun Friday, while on Saturday the early onslaught from Salas put her back in a tense mindset—but it’s an improving situation. On Sunday, Korda turned that pressure into fuel, and to watch her breakaway on the back nine was to watch a thoroughbred suddenly realize her own power. Korda soared with the dual knowledge that nobody could touch her at her best and, more importantly, that she is very much at her best.

Then she came back to earth, with a heat check of a tee shot at the par-3 15th that never came close to finding dry land. It was the first sign of the day that she was, in fact, 22, an error more mental than physical. Even with the two-shot swing after her double bogey, she led by three with three holes to play, and three straight pars sealed the victory, closing with a 68 and a 19-under 279 total. It was the sixth win of her LPGA career, and along with getting the major monkey off her back at a young age, she will also rise to No. 1 in the world for the first time.

After the round, Salas was in tears, but she insisted they were tears of happiness. It was easy to believe her; she had a lot of reasons to feel proud. To lose to Korda, while painful in its way, was a noble, combative loss.

“She played great, and there’s nothing I could have done differently to change her game plan,” Salas said. “And that says a lot about her. I’m just lucky she’s on the American side for that Solheim Cup.”

Darren Carroll/PGA of America
Nelly Korda hits her tee shot on the sixth hole during the final round for the KPMG Women’s Championship.

Things got so bad for Salas in the last year that she considered retiring, and the mention of that period brought the tears back to her eyes.

“What stopped me from retirement? My team stopped me from retirement,” Salas said. “I think finally being raw and coming forward … they pretty much stopped me. They know who I am deep inside, and they know what I’m capable of, and I think for me, trusting people, trusting my team and really committing to the new process, that was a huge turning point.”

Korda, for her part, embodied the ethos of her superlative family in the aftermath. She was happy, but controlled—living in the moment. As Jessica Korda noted earlier in the week, they have been trained to limit their focus to a very narrow scope. Along with genetics, it accounts for the success of both daughters and their brother Sebastian, a rising star in American tennis, in professional sports. It may be that Nelly diverges the most from that ethos, as she had to be reminded by McDede to stop thinking too far ahead on Sunday and has had her battles with nerves. It may also be that she is the most talented of one of the world’s great athletic families. She was effusive, as she stood next to her trophy, about the role that family plays.

“Honestly, when I’m down, they’re always there,” she said. “Just having my mom out here is really nice. Jess is like the best big sister. … I don’t think anyone can come close to her. She just has a heart of gold.”

Nelly was asked if she ever felt like destiny was on her side on Sunday, that she meant to win, and that even her errors would pale in comparison to the triumphs that awaited her. In true fashion, she backed down from the more dramatic implications and spoke of the luck on No. 12.

“When I chunked it and it flew the water,” she joked, recognizing her moment of destiny. “Yeah, in golf you’re going to get bad bounces with good shots and you’re going to hit it close with really bad shots. You’re going to chunk it. That’s just golf. I keep reminding myself that I’ve hit amazing shots in the past, and I’ve been completely screwed in a sense. In a way, no, I didn’t really think about it too much. I just honestly right then and there, I was like, Oh, my God, thank God that flew the water.”

And so it went—when another reporter asked how she had grown in the past year, she laughed and said they should be asking her caddie. When asked what message her father delivered to her on Facetime—he’s in London, watching Sebastian at Wimbledon—the answer was “you’re welcome for the boot camp.”

Kevin C. Cox
Nelly Korda poses with the trophy and her caddie Jason McDede, sister Jessica Korda, mom Regina Rajchrtova and other family.

These are the Kordas, masters of compartmentalization, true athletes in their brains just as in their muscles. In Nelly, they now have a major champion in golf, and she did it by handling the nerves that are innate to her, and shutting them down with hyper-focus in what should have been the most terrifying moment of her career. By virtue of that mental strength, she’s now done something no other Korda has done, which is to be judged the No. 1 player in her sport.

She told the gathered media that because she’s been forced to grow up so fast on the LPGA Tour, she feels 30 rather than 22, and she behaves like it, too. Armed with that amount of talent, pedigree, and perspective, with the major monkey already off her back, it’s hard not to feel that we’ve just seen the start of an historic career.

The post Nelly Korda rises to the challenge with an inspired win at the KPMG Women’s PGA appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
JOHNS CREEK, Ga.—In different ways at this week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, Nelly Korda and Lizette Salas—both at 15 under, five shots clear of the field and set for a final-round clash—are women unburdened.

For Salas, the catharsis came in the form of an emotional Thursday press conference, when she spoke publicly for the first time about her mental health struggles over the last year. Simply hearing her own name on the course felt bad, and she greeted each new day, and each new round, with fear. Golf was her identity, but golf couldn’t help, and the situation spiraled into darkness until she turned outward to her team for help. The healing process began with that decision, but like most recoveries, it was slow and halting.

Korda, en route to winning last week’s Meijer LPGA Classic, told Golf Channel’s Amy Rogers about the often unbearable pressure she puts on herself, to the point that it had clouded what she loved about golf. She missed the cut at the U.S. Open, and it took seeing Bubba Watson and Matthew Wolff speak openly about their own struggles with pressure for her to see the dynamic happening in her own mind.

“It takes someone to say it out loud for you to realize it deep down inside,” she told reporters later, “but when you play well throughout the season—like, I’ve had a pretty good season—you just put so much pressure on yourself. Takes the enjoyment out of it.”

At 22, Korda is mature enough to admit that she’ll probably struggle with it her whole career, as she did Saturday at the PGA, where the adrenaline was spiking and she responded as she usually does, by becoming stoic and keeping her emotions buttoned up.

“Inside, I’m on a pretty big roller coaster,” she said. “But I think it feels good to kind of let it out.”

The new freedom and comfort they each feel were evident on a scorching front nine, when Salas, who trailed by one after Korda’s shocking six-birdie finish on Friday, came out of the gate on fire, draining roughly 80 feet of putts on the first three holes to send notice to the field. Korda immediately understood her job would be to weather the storm and make sure Salas didn’t race too far ahead, and she answered with birdies on the first two holes to extend her own streak to eight in a row.

Montana Pritchard/PGA of America
Lizette Salas on the seventh hole during the third round for the 2021 KPMG Women’s Championship.

But Salas, dressed in blue and black to Korda’s light orange and white, couldn’t be contained, and a beautiful wedge on 5, a downhill slider of a putt on 7, and another 15-footer on 8 saw her go out in 30. Korda did her best to answer, but at the turn, what had been a one-shot lead turned into a two-shot deficit.

Inevitably, reality and a sense of the moment will catch up to golfers after such a tear—think of Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy at the 2016 Ryder Cup, who couldn’t keep the brilliance of their first eight holes up when the intensity peaked during their famous birdie exchange—and Salas came back to earth on 10 with her first bogey. There’s also the water; there’s far more of it on the back nine at Atlanta Athletic Club, haunting almost every green, and target practice had to give way to caution on what is clearly the harder half.

If you’re looking for stylistic differences between the two, Korda plays faster and hits farther. Much farther, in fact, and what was remarkable about the entire round is how Salas stayed with her approach for approach, despite using hybrids and longer irons from as far behind as 50 yards on the fairway. While a cool breeze blew and the cloud cover was thick enough to give temporary reprieves from the sun’s bite, Salas ground her way from hole to hole long after the torrid streak had ended.

The change on the back nine, whether it was the water or a sense of what was at stake, is that neither player could buy a birdie putt. Between them, they only had one, and that came from Korda on 13, where a solid approach yielded the birdie that tied the two at 15 under. That’s where the score would remain for the rest of the round, and the field, while creeping closer, never made a serious move to challenge their supremacy. Patty Tavatanakit, Giulia Molinaro, and Celine Boutier each reached 10 under, but it will take a Herculean effort (or a collapse from both leaders) for any of them to make up that much ground on a course that’s yielding plenty of birdies.

Salas often hails the virtues of “boring golf,” and that’s mostly what we saw from the leaders on the back. Korda flirted with disaster on the par-3 15th, when her shot, though pin-high, came perilously close to the water guarding the right side of the hole.

Darren Carroll/PGA of America
Nelly Korda fist bumps a spectator on the 15th hole during the third round for the 2021 KPMG Women’s Championship.

“I swear to God I gave myself a heart attack,” she said after. “I did tell Jay [Jason McDede, her caddie] when he first started working for me that he’ll have a heart attack a round.”

Aside from that, it was safe golf with the spectre of Sunday looming over everything. Salas, who shot her third straight 67 on Saturday, smiled and engaged the crowd and joked with her caddie between shots (I heard one snippet about a weather app), while true to what she said after the round, Korda (68) was serious and retreating, offering only faint smiles when the galleries—increasingly large as the round wore on—shouted her name.

At the press conference, Korda was polite but eager to leave. She spoke quietly, in a low voice, and said that she’d simply spend the night with family, likely watching the Olympic Trials to keep her mind off the tournament. Salas was her usual gregarious self—”Is it low enough?!” the 5-foot-4 contender said when she saw the microphone—and had no plans for the night beyond finding somewhere to eat outdoors and shutting off her phone.

“My dad says this phrase: Everything has its moment,” Salas said. “I think I was meant to go through what I was going through.”

Korda will feel similarly on her own struggles, and when the two meet on Sunday, the prospect of a professional breakthrough will be the silent third partner in their pairing. Salas is the 31-year-old journeywoman with only one tour victory to her name, and Korda is the young wunderkind with two just this year, but they’ll both be sailing with the wind at their backs, infused with the courage of having fought and survived against an opponent more daunting than any they could find on a golf course.

The post The duel before the duel: Nelly Korda and Lizette Salas overcome their own demons to set up a Sunday showdown appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — When Lizette Salas stood on stage for her post-round press conference, she laughed as one of the TV techs came out to lower the microphone for her.

“It’s not good for my confidence when they do this every time,” she said, smiling at the assembled media.

Salas had just finished her opening-round 67 at Atlanta Athletic Club, good enough for the morning lead at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, and after that light-hearted beginning, few could expect that the conversation would take a serious turn, alighting on Salas’ serious mental health struggles in 2020.

After answering a handful of questions about her round—“I kept it boring,” the 31-year-old said of her five-birdie, zero-bogey day—she mentioned that she no longer felt afraid on the course.

“When were you afraid?” a reporter asked.

“When was I afraid?” she repeated. “Probably all of 2020. That was a really tough year for me. It was probably one of the lowest points of my career mentally”

In her remarks, Salas avoided the nitty-gritty specifics of what she endured, but made it abundantly clear that she had suffered through a painful mental health crisis during COVID-19.

“It was a combination of things,” she said. “I really didn’t like myself in 2020, and I think with the whole COVID and not being able to work and have golf as my outlet, that really hit hard … it was hard for me to even speak about it just because I felt like other people are going through the same thing. ‘Why do I need to feel sorry for myself?’ Over time, it accumulated and got worse, and when I finally got out here, it was just … it was so bad that the golf couldn’t help.”

A look at her record late in 2020 reflects her inner struggle. After not missing a cut for nearly a year and a half, the 10-year LPGA Tour veteran missed cuts in five of eight tournaments starting in October and wrapping around to 2021. It wasn’t last month that Salas says she started to feel like she was emerging from the darkness.

“It takes time,” she said. “I had to take care of my mental health, and that’s something that a lot of people don’t really take into consideration. I think for me coming from a Hispanic background, it’s very hard to talk about that. But I’m very fortunate to have a team that was willing to bend over backwards to help me and to get me to where I am right now.”

Salas credited her team repeatedly and reiterated that learning to ask for help, and to lean on her support system, allowed her to begin to recover. In the midst of the worst periods, she had tried out a new team in Dallas, a move that backfired and made her situation considerably bleaker. She returned to her home base of Los Angeles, to her coach Jim Gormley and her trainer Josh Loyo, and opened up new lines of communication with them.

“They check me when I need to be checked, and vice versa,” she said. “Opening up to them and allowing them to understand what I was going through on a more personal level rather than just golf, I think it really allowed all of us to just be more in sync and to really brainstorm what I need from them even possibly outside the golf course.”

After experiencing extreme anxiety and disappointment on returning to golf last August, she hit a new low, struggled through some of the worst play of her career, and began to wonder how to fight her way out. The answers were not immediate; the process was slow and gradual. When she had trouble sleeping at night, she put her phone away and began reading books, like Erika Sanchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect American Daughter (“I thought it was a biography of myself,” she said), and a book about Frida Kahlo that spoke on the artist’s strength and inspired her to highlight certain passages. Most of all, it was the people around her that never wavered when she needed them most.

“They’re used to me in tears,” she said, “but that’s what being a team is all about, and I consider them family.”

Eventually, the clouds began to lift. In her last four tournaments this season, including the U.S. Women’s Open, she’s finished no worse than 23rd and had her first two top-tens in more than a year.

“I think probably Pure Silk [the Pure Silk Championship in May, where she finished fifth] was the light,” Salas said. “It actually was getting darker before it got lighter, and just being in that at Kingsmill, I had a lot of good memories. John [Killeen] was back on the bag again. I had a new putter and new toys, and I was playing the golf I know how. That really just lit a spark in me.”

She had thought about going public with her struggles earlier in the year, but the moment never felt right, and she never felt ready. Today, given the platform after her round, it came out almost by accident. Now she leads at the Highlands Course and has at least a chance to win for just the second time in her career, the first coming in 2014. It would be a dramatic reward, but as her health returns, Salas is already reaping the benefits, and her philosophy is summed up by a rallying cry she carries with her from her college days as a four-time All-American with the USC Trojans.

“It’s been hard for everybody,” she said of her struggles, “but we’ve come together. As we say at USC, we’re fighting on.”

The post Lizette Salas, early leader at the KPMG Women’s PGA, opens up about mental-health issues appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Altomare has had a strong season, finishing in the top 15 five times on the LPGA Tour in 2019. Park won her first LPGA title in 2018, the ShopRite Classic, and has had three top-10 finishes in 2019. Yin, one of the longest hitters on tour, will once again be the youngest player on Team USA at age 20.

While Altomare and Yin looked like they’d likely secured spots on the team as the tournament played out outside Toronto, the last position was more uncertain. Before the CP Women’s Open, Austin Ernst was ahead of Park. But after Ernst missed the cut in Canada, Park moved ahead of her on the World Ranking list by advancing to the weekend.

Seven golfers had already locked up places on the 2019 U.S. Solheim Cup team prior to the CP Women’s Open: Lexi Thompson, Danielle Kang, Nelly Korda, Jessica Korda, Lizette Salas, Marina Alex and Megan Khang.

Two spots on the U.S. team remain to be filled. Inkster will announce her captain’s picks on Monday. There are several veteran players for Inkster to choose from, notably Cristie Kerr, Stacy Lewis, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel and Gerina Piller. Arguments could be made for all of them.

“I am really happy with my 10 players right now,” Inkster said on Sunday. “The problem is I have more players who deserve to be on the team than I have spots available.”

The European Team has already been finalised. Captain Catriona Matthew will bring the following players to Gleneagles in Scotland:

Celine Boutier (rookie)
Carlota Ciganda
Georgia Hall
Caroline Hedwall
Charley Hull
Bronte Law (rookie)
Caroline Masson
Azahara Munoz
Anna Nordqvist
Suzann Pettersen
Jodi Ewart Shadoff
Anne Van Dam (rookie)

The post Final automatic qualifying spots filled for 2019 U.S. Solheim Cup team appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
On Saturday night, Hannah Green, a relative unknown from Australia, was leading the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, same as the Wikipedia-less LPGA pro had been after the first and second rounds. You might be asking, why didn’t we write a piece explaining who exactly is the 22-year-old days ago? Well, honestly, few necessarily expected her to remain in this position, one stroke ahead of former LPGA player of the year Ariya Jutanugarn and three strokes up on Lizette Salas and Nelly Korda. Players who have never contended in a major championship sometimes pop up into the lead, but they don’t usually stay there.

Hannah Green has proven that she is not such a story.

The way that she has handled herself during the opening three rounds, you’d have thought she’d been here before. She missed just one green on her way to a two-under 70 on Saturday to get to nine under for the championship. Since she hasn’t actually been here—specifically, holding the 54-hole lead of a major—before, and as such has stayed out of the LPGA spotlight, we’ll share a bit of what we know.

Green grew up in Perth, and like every young Australian player, calls Karrie Webb her idol. In 2015, Green attended the U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club as a recipient of Webb’s scholarship. Each year, Webb brings the two top amateur players from Australia with her to a tournament to give the young players a look at what the LPGA Tour is like.

“That was my first time seeing Karrie play in-person,” Green said of the 2015 journey. “I had seen her play on TV multiple times. You never see what the shots are like in-person, especially that week there was a lot of long holes, just seeing her, how well—how good she hits it. I think that’s what she was pretty much known for in her career. Just how you see that in-person and for her to be in contention in the U.S. Open, that was even more amazing to see all the crowds and see how she handles herself.”

That experience has come full circle, as Green is staying in a house this week with Webb and the two current scholarship winners.

The methodical, composed manner that Green walks around the course with is the same way she handles herself in the press room. Though she has experience winning on the Symetra Tour (three wins in 2017, earning rookie-of-the-year honours), she’s never won an LPGA event and never led a major (her best finish this season is a T-10 at the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open).

Green talks humbly about how she feels like she’s gotten some lucky breaks this week, but exudes steady confidence and self-aware humour. Even when she came into the press room after her third round, her lead down from three, she was the same as she’d been all week.

Reigning LPGA player-of-the-year Aryia Jutanugarn is winless so far in 2019, but just one back. (Streeter Lecka/PGA of America)

As calm as Green appears, there’s no denying that finishing on Sunday as the champion will be a difficult task. Just one off Green’s lead is Jutanugarn, already is a two-time major winner and a 10-time LPGA champion, but she is still seeking her first LPGA title in 2019. The 22-year-old Thai native’s best finish so far is T-3 at the LOTTE Championship.

Green spoke about the intimidation factor of playing with Jutanugarn, one of the longest players on the LPGA Tour. Jutanugarn averaged 291 yards off the tee on Saturday, hitting only 3-wood as she didn’t carry a driver for the round.

Nelly Korda is starting to come into her own in 2019. (Jamie Squire)

Four shots behind Green are Salas and Korda. Salas, 29, has won once on the LPGA Tour, the 2014 Kingsmill Championship. Korda, 20, has won twice on tour, including the 2019 ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open. Both Americans are T-5 in fairways hit this week, hitting 79 per cent of the fairways in their first three rounds.

Behind them, there are seven players within six shots of the lead, three already having won major championships (Sung Hyun Park, Danielle Kang and Inbee Park). As calm and cool Green is, she knows that she’s on the precipice of something big, but that there are plenty of people around her trying to achieve the same thing.

“I’ve said all week I’ve been getting lucky but I guess winners do get lucky,” Green said. “You need to take it while you can and I know, yes, I have thought about the outcome tomorrow come the 18th hole. I think I just need to keep my cool and just have fun out there and embrace it. If it does come to me winning I want to make sure I remember and have fun. I don’t want to be miserable and sick during the round.”

The post Who is Hannah Green and how is she still leading the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
Maybe the pressure of the moment got to Lizette Salas, who needed a birdie on 18 to beat Sung Hyun Park and win the Indy Women in Tech Championship. It would have marked her second LPGA win, her first coming in 2014.

After missing the fairway on 18, Salas had to hit her next shot from the thick rough. She put a wedge shot to within four feet, but the birdie putt missed the hole completely. Salas, frustrated, smiled at herself moments later – as though acknowledging her own error in allowing the gravity of the moment and a possible victory get the best of her.

So instead of hoisting the trophy, she headed into a sudden death playoff with Park, who birdied the first hole to win for the third time in 2018.

The sting of the loss was there, but after the round Salas focused on the positives that got her into the playoff.

“My confidence is there. “nd this might draw me back a little bit, but I’m going to rise to the challenge again, and I will be back, for sure,” said Salas, who started the final round with a two-shot lead over Park.

For Park, the win is the fifth of her young career. After winning co-player of the year and rookie of the year honors in 2017, Park has had a more tumultuous 2018 season. She has missed six cuts, but has won three times. With this win at the Brickyard Crossing Golf Club, the 24-year-old is predicted to regain her World No. 1 ranking.

Andy Lyons

Not atop the leaderboard but still one of the most talked-about players in Indianapolis, Lexi Thompson made her return to competitive golf after taking nearly a month off. Thompson, who was defending in Indiana, said she used the break from the tour to mentally cope with the toll 2017 took on her emotionally. She finished the event 17-under, tied for 12th. The four days were highlighted with a third-round 64 for Thompson.

The post Sung Hyun Park wins, Lizette Salas gets painfully close to second LPGA victory, and Lexi Thompson returns appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
As the fifth singles match came through the difficult par-3 17th hole at Des Moines Golf & Country Club on Sunday, the Solheim Cup about to be decided, the numbers were being crunched.

If Angel Yin won, the Americans would have earned 3½ points for the day, enough to secure a tie and retain the prize they had been so desperately pursing in front of the raucous crowds. When she made bogey, and Europe’s Karine Icher made par, the match went on to the 18th all square.

Yin ended up halving her match, so now the focus turned to Lizette Salas, facing Jodi Ewart-Shadoff. Salas was 2 up going into the 17th, so the worst that could come of her match would be a half. That meant the U.S. had its 3½ points, enough to clinch the Cup.

With that knowledge, U.S. captain Juli Inkster, who had been walking back and forth through a patch of rough between the 17th green and 16th fairway, finally appeared at ease. Forget the large five-point lead her team had going into Sunday singles. Inkster was nervous on Sunday. The 57-year-old had seen pretty much everything in her four-plus decades of competitive golf, including her own team come back from a four-point deficit two years ago in Germany, the biggest rally in Solheim Cup history. She wasn’t counting out Europe until it was over.

“How could you not be nervous? The problem is, 18 holes is a lot of golf,” said Inkster. “You’re just watching the board. I felt like I had no control over anything. Once I got out on the golf course and got to talk to the girls, I felt a lot better.”

It was a big moment, but one that Inkster chose to reflect on at first internally. Eventually, assistant captains came over to hug her, as did European captain Annika Sorenstam. And Inkster was all smiles, hearing through radios that Salas was going to get the outright win on the 18th and hopping in a cart to get down there in time to watch.

“It was my job to bring fun back to the Solheim Cup.” —Juli Inkster

The captain walked up to the green as Salas lined up her par putt. It fell, and soon an American flag was across the young woman’s shoulders, Inkster was on the green hugging her, more teammates and assistant captains rushed to be part of the celebration. The crowd continued its chant of “USA-USA-USA.”

There would be no historic European comeback. When the final matches wrapped up, the Americans won 16½-11½, taking the Cup for a second straight year and the 10th time in 17 matches. But there was some history made; it turned out being the largest margin of victory for the U.S. team since they won 17-11 in 1996.

• • •

The Solheim Cup is an odd mix of individual performances and intense teamwork. It’s a week where 12 athletes from the U.S. and 12 from Europe, who almost every other week of the year compete for themselves are suddenly in a situation where they’re competing for their teammates, for their captains and for their countries.

It’s something the captains have to balance, too.

Like the best leaders in any sport, Inkster provided a huge support system for her squad. A number of her players were only junior golfers when Inkster was dominating the LPGA, winning 31 tour events, including seven majors, and earning a place in the World Golf Hall of Fame. The generational divide allowed for her players to hold a true admiration and respect towards Inkster, even as she could be seen pumping up the crowd—who can’t get enough of her—and dancing around the first tee.

Inkster leads her U.S. team’s celebration during the final day singles matches of the 2017 Solheim Cup. (Photo by Stuart Franklin)

For all the ways that Inkster worked well with others, however, she also admitted to the Golf Channel, “I don’t like a lot of people around me. I like to be by myself.”

It’s this ability to function as an individual within the framework of a team that made Inkster a great captain. And by being a great captain, Inkster helped personifies what Solheim Cup means to so many involved in it, players, officials and fans alike.

“She’s a legend,” Brittany Lincicome said of Inkster. “It’s an honor to play for her. And she keeps telling us do it for yourselves, not for me. But it’s kind of hard not to do it for her because she’s just so fantastic.”

As impressive as Inkster is as an individual, what made her so vital to this team’s success was her true understanding of how a team should function. Inkster’s players trusted her, even if they don’t completely understand how she was able to bring out the best in their play. All they know is, unlike almost every other week of the year, the three-days in Iowa saw more of them making more long putts than anybody could remember.

“She’s intense on the golf course,” Stacy Lewis said. “And she’s passionate. And she wants to win more than anybody. And that’s what she brought out in all of us on that Sunday [in 2015]…. I don’t know what she did but she brought it on all of us.”

“Juli said something that really hit home for me,” said Cristie Kerr, the oldest player on the U.S. team at 39 and thus the one that has the closest connection to her in Inkster’s truly competitive days. “You play for the person in front of you, you play for the person behind you. It’s not about your individual records. It’s for the team. It’s amazing you can pull for each other when you have that mentality.”

• • •

There are many examples of Inkster picking her team members up, but none demonstrates that ability better than with Lexi Thompson in her opening Sunday singles match against Anna Nordqvist. Both golfers were expected to set the tone for the day for their respective teams. With Thompson being the No. 2 player in the world, Nordqvist battling mono, and the Americans riding their seeming insurmountable five-point lead, it seemed likely that the tone of the match would mimic the “USA-USA-USA” chants ringing through the course.

But Nordqvist won the first four holes, and Thompson didn’t look like herself. She was missing fairways and short putts. Inkster, who had been on the first tee, came out to talk to her after the fourth hole.

Thompson made the turn still 4 down. But then, something happened. She won the 10th with a birdie. She then holed out from the fairway on the 11th for an eagle. She stuck her approach to a foot and a half on 13. She dropped a 30-footer for another eagle on 15 to bring it to all square, and then added another birdie for good measure on the 16th The two halved the 17th with bogeys, and the match went down the 18th. A few hours earlier, no one could have imagined it would get that far. It ended all square, each player winning half a point.

Inkster embraces Lexi Thompson on the 18th green after Thompson rallied to halve the first singles match against Anna Nordqvist during Sunday play at the 2017 Solheim Cup. (Photo by David Cannon)

“I just told her, ‘Hey, you know, you’re the best player on this team. And you got a ton of holes left.’ I said, ‘You just gotta keep plugging away,’ ” said Inkster.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Thompson said of the exchange.

Of course, you can’t give complete credit to a captain for the success of the team’s play. Ultimately, the players have to show up and win points. They deserve the real accolades. And Inkster wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I’ve been fortunate to play in a lot of Solheim Cup teams,” she said, having won as a player five times. “I just felt the last couple times I wasn’t having any fun. It was a chore. I just felt like everybody was going in different directions and even though we were a team, were we a team?”

In her first few Solheim Cups, Inkster said the team spend more time together and were able to bond through that. “I just felt like we were losing that,” said Inkster.

“It was my job to bring fun back to the Solheim Cup. And whether we win or lose, you know what? It doesn’t matter. It’s the memories you create. It’s the bonding you create. It’s the atmosphere you create.”

With the win, Inkster becomes the second U.S. captain to win two in a row. Sitting in the press room with a dozen players smiling and laughing, Inkster in the middle cracking jokes, it’s hard to imagine the Solheim Cup without her. So, it was natural to ask if she’d be interested in captaining a third time.

“I don’t want to go there,” said Inkster. “I would love to do it, but I think there are other people in line who want a chance. But I’ll be there. I’ll be there with some hugs.”

The truth is, no one can really picture a Solheim Cup without her.

The post Solheim Cup 2017: Captain America appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
It was going to take a historic effort from the European team to erase a five-point deficit and somehow take back the Solheim Cup on Sunday at Des Moines Golf & Country Club. But the United States team wouldn’t allow it. Earning six of the 12 available singles points on Sunday when it only needed 3½, the American side finished out an impressive three-day triumph, winning 16½-11½, to retain the Cup.

Sunday’s first match out proved an example of the fire that U.S. captain Juli Inkster’s team demonstrated all week. Lexi Thompson struggled early to try and set a tone, falling 4 down through nine holes to Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist.

But then Thompson, after encouraging words from Inkster, regrouped, winning the 10th with a birdie, holing out from the fairway for eagle on the 11th hole for another win and making long putts to win the 13th (with a birdie) and 15th (with eagle) to square the match. Thompson then jumped into the lead with another impressive birdie on the 16th. The pair would halve the match when Nordqvist won the 18th hole, but it showed that a crazy comeback like the one the U.S. pulled off in 2015 (when the Americans wiped out a four-point deficit to win in Germany) wasn’t going to happen for Team Europe.

Shortly after, Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr finished off their respective matches with Georgia Hall and Mel Reid. Creamer, an alternate who made the team only after Jessica Korda pulled out of the competition with an injury, capped a 3-1 record for the week, while Kerr went 3-0-1 and upped her all-time points total to a record 21.

A combination of guaranteed halve points from Angel Yin (who halved her match with Karine Icher), Lizette Salas (who beat Jodi Ewart-Shadoff) and Gerina Piller (who beat Florentyna Parker) put the American team past the 14½-point threshold to win the Cup.

In the end, it was the proverbial team effort for Team USA in Iowa. All 12 players on the U.S. side won at least one match during the week. And Inkster, the victorious captain as well in 2015, joined Judy Rankin as the only women to captain to back-to-back winning U.S. Solheim Cup teams.

Team USA celebrate victory over Team Europe during the Sunday singles matches of the Solheim Cup at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club. (Photo by Harry How)

“I’m just proud of my team,” Inkster said. “I really haven’t been nervous all week, but I was a little nervous today. It’s just an honor to captain this team, and I’m really honored to captain these girls.”

“We just got outplayed, no doubt about it,” said European captain Annika Sorenstam. “I’m just so proud with how they fought.”

The post Solheim Cup 2017: United States takes care of business on Sunday, wins Solheim Cup, 16½-11½ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
Watching the Solheim Cup isn’t like watching a normal women’s event. Obviously the small field of only Americans and Europeans make it different, but what really stands out is the team mentality that has taken over. The amount of smiles and cheers you see from players, the choreographed handshakes, the big celebrations, the noise, the easy-going nature of the group press conferences that are as full of jokes as they are quotes – it’s all about the team.

And it’s all very fun to watch, but these are individual athletes who have spent the vast majority of their lives functioning with that individual, take care of myself, mindset. You’d think the switch to being on a team would be a little difficult. But somehow, they effortlessly slip into the team mentality of the Solheim Cup, and thrive in it.

Harry How

“I couldn’t have asked for better partners today,” said Danielle Kang, who won both her matches on Friday, becoming the fifth rookie to do so. “I got to play with my big sis [Michelle Wie] and we killed it out there, and we have such good chemistry. I played with Lizette [Salas], my long-time friend. And it was really fun playing alternate shots, having each other’s back.”

Salas felt the same way.

“I’ve been waiting six years for this,” said Salas of playing with Kang. “She picked me up when I was down. She had all the faith in the world in me. And that’s what a partner has to be, and I’m just so grateful and so proud of her.”

Salas got hot in the afternoon and made five birdies on the front nine of her match with Angel Yin. There was a moment, though, on what ended up being their last hole, where Salas was out.

“She said, ‘I need your help,’” Yin recalled. “I was like, ‘I got you. I got you.’”

Harry How

There are dozens of such moments throughout the matches at the Solheim Cup.

The ease with which these individual athletes are able to become teammates is endearing and inspires the same camaraderie from the fans. The energetic atmosphere it creates is intoxicating.

But, on a psychological level, why isn’t it more difficult for these individual athletes to become teammates?

To figure this out, we talked to Dr. Gio Valiante, a sports psychologist who has worked with a number of PGA tour players, including Matt Kuchar and Davis Love III.

“Self-efficacy is the psychological term for what’s commonly known as confidence,” explains Dr. Valiante. “Golfers spend their lives having to derive their confidence from themselves. It’s very very taxing to keep soliciting self- efficacy (because the game taxes it at every turn).”

When you’re playing by yourself and you hit a bad shot, you have to rely on your own ability to bounce back. At the Solheim Cup, your partner can be gritty for you in moments you’re feeling weak.

Stuart Franklin

“Team events provide an opportunity for collective efficacy, also known as group confidence,” says Dr. Valiante. “We not only have others building our confidence, but we get to rely on others to absorb the negatives. The shared experience benefits both the upside and downside of confidence.”

When something bad happens on the course, you don’t have to deal with it on your own. Your partner can make you feel confident when you’re not feeling confident, and when you are feeling confident, they bolster it.

“Golfers really love team events for that reason,” says Dr. Valiante. “It’s a psychological reprieve.”

The post Solheim Cup 2017: Why golfers love playing as a team appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

8:10 Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson vs Mel Reid and Charley Hull

8:22 Danielle Kang and Lizette Salas vs Carlota Ciganda and Caroline Masson

8:34 Paula Creamer and Austin Ernst vs Anna Nordqvist and Georgia Hall

8:46 Stacy Lewis and Gerina Piller vs Karine Icher and Catriona Matthew

The Kerr-Thompson pairing is very strong. Kerr is playing in her ninth Solheim Cup, and has been having an impressive and consistent season. She has a win along with five other top-five finishes in LPGA events this season. Thompson, who is playing in her third Solheim Cup, has also won this season and is currently ranked No. 2 in the world.

Related: Heavily-favoured U.S. team staying humble, fused at Solheim Cup

Though the 2017 resumes of Hull and Reid don’t match the feats of Thompson and Kerr, the two are good at the Solheim Cup. This is Hull’s third time playing, and her record is 6-2-0. This is also Reid’s third Solheim Cup appearance. She’s gone 4-3-1 in the last two.

If Hull and Reid were to win, it would certainly be considered an upset. But while good results in stroke play are important and can instill confidence, there’s no way to calculate how that’s going to translate into match play.

The post Power-pairing Thompson and Kerr out first for U.S. in Solheim Cup appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.