Europe left with lingering ‘what ifs’ after Solheim Cup loss – Irish Golfer Magazine

Team competition golf is just a different animal. This wasn’t the greatest Solheim Cup – too many of the matches were heavily one-sided so the actual big moments coming down the stretch were few and far between, but there were still enough of them to remind us why it’s great.

Emily Pedersen’s wedge to kick-in distance on the 18th hole in the opening session looked as though it was going to be arbitrary for so much of the week, but the point that Europe earned as a result was huge on Sunday’s scoreboard as the tide turned just blue enough to ensure that we got that hour or so where every shot, every miss and make took on near ‘life and death’ status.

Ultimately, what resulted in the United States winning back the trophy they’d not hoisted since 2017 was that they had better players, in better form, who simply turned up and played better over the course of the week.

But the US having better players who were in better form is nothing new. The same could be claimed about almost every Ryder or Solheim Cup of the last 30 years, and it’s often been those moments of inspiration, often provided by unlikely sources that have swung the pendulum in Europe’s favour.

And after being that unlikely source of inspiration in two previous Solheim Cups, for Leona Maguire to only feature in two of the five matches was rather baffling. Even more baffling, is that Maguire herself was as much in the dark as any of the fans and media watching on the grounds or from afar.

“The feeling I got was that I was a little bit too short and didn’t make enough birdies,” was Maguire’s assessment when she was interviewed after keeping her 100 percent Solheim Cup singles record intact with a 4&3 win over Ally Ewing.

It’s true, she is one of the shorter hitters, certainly among the 24 players across both teams, but the same can be said of most LPGA tournaments and could have been said about both Solheim Cups where she has previously excelled.

There’s always a tendency to second-guess every decision made by the losing captain and to believe that the reason for defeat lies within, but it’s too simplistic to say that playing Leona more frequently would’ve altered the outcome.

She’d be the first to admit that 2024 hasn’t been her best season, and that she didn’t play to the best of her ability in the one Fourballs match she played alongside Georgia Hall, but her Solheim Cup record deserves respect and deserved more respect than she was shown.

Leona is not the kind of personality to go all Phil Mickelson at Gleneagles, but her “I think I proved today there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and I think I made plenty of birdies today” was about as close as we’re likely to come. It spoke volumes, and it showed the kind of fighting spirit that has made her one of the most feared Solheim Cup competitors in recent history.

We’ll never know if it would have made any difference had she been selected to play on Saturday. After all, it was losing the eight matches on Friday by a 6-2 scoreline that was the difference on Sunday.

But those are the responsibilities that a team captain takes on, those are the difficult decisions they have to make, and those are the criticisms that come their way when those decisions don’t pay off.

After back-to-back stagings, it now returns to the traditional biennial intervals for moving forward and that’s a good thing because it allows for more storylines to develop, for more players to emerge and put themselves in the picture.

Two years is a long time in women’s golf in particular, but it’s hard not to see Maguire being on the shortlist for selection if she doesn’t earn her place automatically, and even though she fell heavily to a 6&4 loss on Friday evening, her Solheim Cup reputation hasn’t suffered that much.

Instead, here we are writing about her in a ‘what if’ as opposed to a ‘because of’ capacity. But that will be of little consolation to Maguire herself. Winning her singles match and keeping her perfect singles record intact is nice on a personal level, but losing overall and watching powerless from the sidelines is a bitter pill to have to swallow.

And it will only stoke the fire inside to be there in the Netherlands in 2026 and make up for lost ground.