USA! USA!

The Solheim Cup matches are still in progress but Morgan Pressel’s 3&2 win over puts the score at 14-11 in favor of the United States. Christina Kim is dormie in her match against Tania Elosegui. That means the Americans will score at least 14.5 and out of 28 points total that gives them the win.

Today’s final result is likely to be 15.5 or 16 for the U.S. The matches were actually quite close today, not just because Europe and the United States were tied when play started this morning. At the mid point of play, Europe was ahead in matches and I was getting a bad feeling. The United States rallied, perhaps due to the turnarounds in the matches of Juli Inkster-Gwladys Nocera and Brittany Lang-Laura Davies. Lang was down all most all the way but salvaged a half after Davies played the 18th hole disastrously. Inkster trailed for most of her match too but pulled ahead at 17 but lost 18. Still that was another big half point for the United States.

The star of the 2009 matches for the U.S.? You can’t argue with the selection of Michelle Wie. Wie went 3.5-.5 in her matches, including a one up win in singles against one of Europe’s better players Helen Alfredsson. That was the best record for any of the Americans. Will Michelle’’s detractors turn down the volume a little. One of their main complaints was that Wie hadn’t won anything since 2003. That doesn’t apply any more at all.

Update- Kim won her match. So the score is now 15-11 in favor of the United States. Cristie Kerr is dormie in her match, Natalie Gulbis is one down. The U.S. will have at least 15.5 when it is all over but could score as high as 17. That would be a deceptive score, play was much closer than that.

2nd Update- Gulbis pulled even with Janice Moodie at 17. What a turn around there also. Natalie was down by 3 holes in her match.