Golf
Jason Sobel, ESPN Senior Writer 7y

Weekly 18: Solheim Cup delivers plenty of punch

Golf, PGA Tour

An eclectic, and bunched, leaderboard coupled with the will-they-or-won't-they drama of players trying to keep their jobs surprisingly turned the Wyndham Championship into compelling theater, but it still paled in comparison with the Solheim Cup, which developed into some of the best theater of the year. This edition of the Weekly 18 begins with that competition -- and why it should be enjoyed for what it was, not castigated for what it could be.

1. Here's what the main takeaway should be from this past week's brilliant Solheim Cup: Those were two dozen of the world's best players, giving everything they had for the respective teams. It was edge-of-your-seat excitement in one of the year's most anticipated events. As one person on-site at Des Moines Golf and Country Club told me, the standard of golf was higher than perhaps anything we've witnessed before, at least in this event. Hopefully, this helps grow women's golf, raises the profiles of some of these superstars and leaves us collectively salivating for the next competition in two years.

2. Here's what the takeaway (at least part of it) will be instead: The United States won again and, at 16½-11½, the final score really wasn't that close. Considering 12 of the world's top-15 players hail from Asian countries and therefore are ineligible for this specific event, there's something wrong with it and it needs to be changed and until it is, there will be something lacking.

3. Moral of the story: People will complain about anything. There's absolutely nothing wrong with an event that biennially has become must-see TV, from captains dancing on the first tee to fans attending in full force (and fully outfitted) to the fierce on-course competition. Let it be, let it be. If you can find something negative from these festivities, you're simply looking in the wrong place.

4. In the poker match of international competitions, the Solheim Cup raised the stakes against the Ryder Cup from last year's Sunday singles matches between Patrick Reed-Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson-Sergio Garcia with its own instant classic of Lexi Thompson and Anna Nordqvist. Here's the quick synopsis: Nordqvist took an early 4-up lead through four holes, Thompson played a seven-hole stretch in 8 under to overtake the lead, then Nordqvist birdied the last for a deserving half-point.

5. Thompson didn't stop firing darts when the match was over, either. When asked to explain her performance, she explained, "It was a really weird round of golf for me. I was asleep on the front nine and lights-out on the back." That's a helluva quote just minutes after that kind of match, for every possible entendre.

6. One more Lexi note: I get that the first hole wasn't playing the full 306 yards that it showed on the scorecard; I get that it was downhill and others were doing the same thing during practice rounds. For Thompson to step up to the first tee on Friday morning, surrounded by that electric atmosphere, and belt a 3-wood onto the green was incredibly cool.

7. Paula Creamer wasn't originally on the U.S. team. She was a controversial omission by Inkster, the biggest name to get bumped off in favor of new blood. A few days later, when Jessica Korda announced she'd be sidelined due to injury, Creamer could've balked at the late invitation. Instead, she played and played well, compiling a 3-1-0 record for the winning side.

8. Prior to the opening round of the Wyndham Championship, Henrik Stenson admitted that he was playing in part to fulfill his required minimum of 15 starts to retain PGA Tour membership, since he had 12 previous starts and was assured of reaching only the first two playoff events. Good decision. In a year that included just one prior top-10 on U.S. soil, Stenson might've benefited from the confidence that comes with playing against a different field than he's accustomed to in majors and WGCs. He was the lone top-20 player in the field and looked like it, rolling in putts on the back-nine that evoked memories of his thrilling Open Championship victory last summer. Consider his Sunday win a great example of the product of circumstance.

9. Players will often insist that talent and solid play alone aren't always enough to succeed. You've gotta get a few lucky bounces, too. Playing the par-5 15th hole on Sunday, eventual runner-up Ollie Schniederjans went for the green in two from 234 yards. He pulled it left and watched it rattle around a hospitality tent, disappearing from view for a second or two before reappearing and bounding into a green-side bunker. He easily could have been out of bounds. Instead, he got up and down from that bunker for a birdie. That's a huge swing at an unbelievably timely moment.

10. Somehow, that wasn't even the best drama of the final few holes for Schniederjans. On the final hole, the hatless wonder belted a 1-iron off the tee 341 yards, then nearly holed his second shot. Yes, you read that right. An iron ... off the tee ... 341 yards. Even the old-school golf purists who continually whine about the ball going too far can stand up and applaud a well-struck, old-fashioned 1-iron.

11. I wish I had Schniederjans' hair. I'd never wear a hat again.

12. I wish I had Schniederjans' 1-iron swing. I'd never hit a driver again.

13. When the FedEx Cup playoffs were first introduced in 2006, the idea was that the PGA Tour's best players would compete against each other in four weeks of late-season competition. That idea has come to fruition. But a residual effect of a playoff system played out perfectly at the Wyndham. Martin Flores, Rory Sabbatini, Geoff Ogilvy, J.J. Henry and Harold Varner III all earned another chip at the table by qualifying on Sunday afternoon for the first playoff event. Watching players keep -- and, in some cases, potentially lose -- their jobs never gets old.

14. Entering this past week, Hunter Mahan, Matt Every and Steven Bowditch, each a multiple PGA Tour champion, had made the cut in a combined 17 of 66 starts this season. (That would be 9-of-21 for Mahan; 7-of-24 for Every; and 1-of-21 for Bowditch.) They each reached the weekend at the Wyndham, finishing 13th, 16th and 64th, respectively. Their struggles are varied, but the journeys have been similar. All of which makes it good news that each of the three earned a paycheck. Hopefully, it'll unlock some of the talent that each of them obviously possess.

15. This was terrific from the unfailingly honest Every, after he claimed the opening-round lead: "I couldn't let myself quit. There's a lot of low points though, man. Just life. Everything that I've been through I've brought on myself. So, I don't need any sympathy or anything. It's just the way my path has been so far the last couple years. I'm going to have a career here next year. I'm planning on it. ... I find ways to motivate. I practice my butt off, man; I really do. Last week for me, I watched the PGA at home. That sucked for me. I don't go to bed at night saying there's a 144 guys better than me that are playing in this tournament. I can't do that. That's kind of a way I might motivate myself a little bit. Just little tricks I play on myself."

16. Phil Mickelson has endured a dreadful late-summer stretch. Since parting ways from longtime caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay -- and I'm not suggesting that's the sole reason -- Mickelson owns a T-20, a T-39 and two missed cuts. Even so, he's still going to play on the Presidents Cup team -- unless one of two things happens. The first is both Patrick Reed and Matt Kuchar falling outside the top-10 in the points standings; they're the two veteran players who could precipitate a need to make picks other than Mickelson. The second is if Lefty himself decides he's tired at the end of a long year, not playing his best golf and needs some time away. In that sense, he'd be doing U.S. captain Steve Stricker a favor by taking the heat off him and pulling his name from consideration. But don't expect that to happen -- Mickelson is extremely prideful about competing for every U.S. team since 1994. He's almost certainly going to be on this one, too.

17. Count me among those surprised that Rory McIlroy will indeed tee it up at the Northern Trust this week. This comes just a week-and-a-half after he admitted at the PGA Championship, "I don't know what I'm going to do. You might not see me until next year. You might see me in a couple of weeks time." My spidey senses told me this was Rory's not-so-subtle way of giving us a heads up without officially decommitting in the heat of the moment, just minutes after finishing his final round. I was wrong. (Happens a lot.) McIlroy will head to Glen Oaks this week trying to save a season that has been marred by an injury and a handful of coulda-beens.

18. I don't expect all of you to be constantly in tune with the ever-variant world of title sponsors, but the first two FedEx Cup playoff events should prove to be more confusing than usual. Gone are the previously named The Barclays and Deutsche Bank Championship. They are now called The Northern Trust and the Dell Technologies Championship -- or even more confounding, the TNT and DTC. Get 'em right. You'll be quizzed later.

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