As the players of the first place in the European team, Lottie Woad and Charlie Hull said they expect to play in all five Solheim Cup games.
They could not foresee the results.
With two days in the books at Bernard Golf in the Netherlands, Woad and Hull were paired in each session, but only collected half a point.
Three defeats and a draw. That’s disappointing math for the 7 and 8 players in the world.
“Yeah, it was pretty frustrating,” Hull said.
“He didn’t just make putts,” added Woad.
It was late Saturday, and both were fresh off a double dose of defeat. In the morning foursomes, they were beaten 6 and 5 by Alison Lee and Lauren Coughlin. In four balls in the afternoon, Hull and Woad came close, but without a cigar. Fail 1 to Yealimi Noh and Andrea Lee.
To listen to Woad and Hull, their dismal record so far does not reflect the quality of their play.
“I felt like we really played pretty solid, to be fair, didn’t we?” Hull said.
“Yeah,” Woad said, “Yesterday in the fourball, we were like 10, 11-under and obviously it was a big back-and-forth game on that. And then I don’t think anyone would have beaten who we played this morning. They were 7-under 14. So credit to them. Everyone played amazing when we played.”
On Saturday afternoon, Woad and Hull never led, but they also never trailed by more than 2, and they forced the match to the final hole when Hull birdied the par-4 17th. But on the 18th, needing a win to square the match, Hull drove it into the water and Woad dropped his birdie attempt.
“I think today we didn’t hit a lot of putts in the morning and all afternoon and that’s the difference,” Woad said. “The people we were playing with were standing 15 feet away and we weren’t.”
Match-play can be like that. Results are not always a fair reflection of performance. But match-play can also lead to second-guessing, and European captain Anna Nordqvist faced a suggestion that Saturday when asked what Woad and Hull needed to improve in Sunday’s singles.
Not much, Nordqvist said.
“I think a lot of it is just for them to keep doing what they’ve been doing,” he said. “We played the best players in the world from both teams, so it will be some tough matches, it will be very good golf that will not be rewarded. It’s just golf.”
On the bright side for the Europeans, the Swedish pair of Maya Stark and Linn Grant won all three matches. On Saturday, they were giant slayers, beating the No. World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Allison Corpuz 3 and 2 in the morning before ousting American stalwarts Megan Khang and Lauren Coughlin in the afternoon. The loss was Khang’s first in eight games, and Coughlin’s first in his Solheim Cup career.
