Europe’s Charley Hull and Lottie Woad will face Team USA’s crack pairing Nelly Korda and Allisen Corpuz in Friday’s opening match of the Solheim Cup at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands.
While English pair Woad and Hull are seventh and eighth in the rankings, the American duo have won all four of their foursomes matches across the past two editions of the contest. That included a victory over Hull and Esther Henseleit in the first match of the 2024 edition.
“Charley and Lottie, they’ve got to play together quite a bit on tour this year, so I think they were both very excited to be paired with each other,” said Europe’s captain Anna Nordqvist. “If you are going to be anywhere on Friday morning you want to be on the first tee because it doesn’t get better than that.”
US captain Angela Stanford, added: “If I didn’t put those two out first, I would be questioned. I feel like the whole world knew that they were coming. We can talk about Nelly and we can talk about her being the number one player in the world, but don’t sleep on Allisen. I’ve called her the backbone of our team. She’s pretty tough. There are a lot of good things going on in that pairing that, you know, they just complement each other really well.”
Denmark’s Nanna Koerstz Madsen is paired with France’s Celine Boutier in match two and they take on Alison Lee and Lauren Coughlin.
Germany’s Henseleit and Ireland’s Leona Maguire will play Andrea Lee and debutant Lindy Duncan, while Swedish duo Maja Stark and Linn Grant get started against Rose Zhang and Jennifer Kupcho.
The United States have dominated the previous two opening foursomes sessions, winning 4-0 at Finca Cortesin in 2023 and taking a 3-1 advantage at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in 2024. Europe are looking to regain the trophy after losing 15½-12½ in Virginia two years ago.
Play gets under way at Bernardus at 6.40am (UK time) with four foursomes matches, followed by the fourballs starting at 12.05pm.
Read the full article here
