CROMVOIRT, Netherlands \u2014 Jennifer Kupcho shushed the pro-European crowd by putting her index finger to her mouth to start the back nine on Saturday. She had just sunk an eight-foot putt on the 10th hole of her fourball match in the Solheim Cup. She and her partner Lindy Duncan were still 1 down at that point and the putt was to tie the hole.<\/p>\n
Then Kupcho really silenced the crowd with her sizzling putter. On the par-4 17th, she made a circus-like putt from 91 feet to win the hole against Carlota Ciganda and Celine Boutier to tie the match. Then, unfathomably, she did it again.<\/p>\n
On the 18th, in the last match of the day, Kupcho made a 25-foot walk-off putt to win the match with partner Lindy Duncan and lift the Americans into an 8-8 tie after the first two days of play at Bernardus Golf Club. The squads will head into Sunday\u2019s 12 singles matches with the U.S. needing six points to retain the Cup and another half point beyond that to win it again outright.<\/p>\n
It was quite a scene at dusk, with all of Kupcho\u2019s teammates watching her final putt fall in from just behind her. The European fans were stunned into silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to kind of take the crowd down a little bit, down a level,\u201d Kupcho said. \u201cThey were getting a little bit rowdy out there, so [we wanted to] silence them a little bit. I think me and Lindy played a really great match and really brought the momentum to the team. I think everybody\u2019s super excited to get out there [Sunday] and I think we\u2019re going to take our momentum with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back-to-back unbelievable putts from Kupcho put the U.S team right where captain Angela Stanford wanted them. And the crowd right where Kupcho wanted it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re out there chanting and it gets a bit annoying at some points, but you just kind of hang in there and I think we did that amazing,\u201d Kupcho said.<\/p>\n
After the putt on 18, Kupcho took it a step further with the crowd and raised her hand to her ear. Duncan was looking on with her hands on her head in disbelief.<\/p>\n
The U.S. was down by one point heading into the final match and Kupcho wrecked Europe\u2019s plans to go into Sunday with a nice lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was huge. That absolutely turned the tide,\u201d Stanford said.<\/p>\n
If history is any indication, the Americans are in fine position to retain the Cup they won 2024 in Virginia. The U.S. has dominated Sunday\u2019s singles matches, leading 122\u00bd-97\u00bd all-time. In eight of the previous 19 Solheim Cups, the U.S. has outscored the European team by three or more points. Three of those times were on the road, including the last win in Europe, 2015 in Germany. The U.S. trailed 10-6 heading into the final day that year and dominated singles by five points to win the Cup.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s singles matches should provide plenty of drama as Englishwoman Charley Hull kicks things off in the first match against Megan Khang. Hull and Lottie Woad\u2014arguably the best European duo on paper\u2014played all four matches together the first two days and went winless at 0-3-1. They\u2019re the first duo to ever play together four times in one Solheim Cup, and Europe didn\u2019t get the results it wanted from that pairing.<\/p>\n
This is the seventh time the Solheim Cup is tied heading into the final round. Of those, the team playing on home soil is 5-0-1. Europe captain Anna Nordqvist hopes her team can shake off that blockbuster Saturday finish by the Americans and take advantage of a home crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did everything they could,\u201d Nordqvist said of Ciganda and Boutier in the final match. \u201cHow many times out of 10 do you make that putt? It\u2019s an unbelievable putt [Kupcho] makes on 17 and even the putt she makes on 18. You can\u2019t really do anything about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think overall it\u2019s been a great day,\u201d she added. \u201cWe\u2019re tied going into [Sunday]. We have 12 matches and I know the girls are ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alison Lee, who has been a part of three wins this Cup, will go off second on Sunday against Esther Henseleit, and Angel Yin takes on Linn Grant in the third match. Yin has a tall task. She and Yealimi Noh halved their afternoon match on Day 1, but Yin hasn\u2019t played since. After being draped in an American flag cheering on her teammates on Saturday, Yin spent part of the afternoon at the driving range. She\u2019s still a wildcard given her two-month break with a gastrointestinal issue and struggles Friday that left her in tears. She was back with a smile Saturday.<\/p>\n
World No. 1 Nelly Korda had the afternoon off from a fourball match on Saturday, and she\u2019ll go up against rookie Mimi Rhodes, who has secured two points for Europe.<\/p>\n
Kupcho is the second-to-last match against Carlota Ciganda. That could be spicy. Kupcho\u2019s two crazy putts were against Ciganda.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gives all a boost. They\u2019re all fired up now. It\u2019s the energy we needed,\u201d Stanford said. \u201cI felt we were kind of flat, honestly. It\u2019s been a long week. This is just what we needed for the energy going into [Sunday]. If we would\u2019ve been 7-9, I would\u2019ve been pretty nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanford had asked her team to hang in there and keep it close heading into the final day. That\u2019s exactly what they did. The U.S. has won just three times in Europe, but Stanford has a good feeling about this.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re having 2015 vibes of Germany on Sunday,\u201d Stanford said. \u201cAll of a sudden, they now believe they can get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanford chose Rose Zhang to be in the final match and she\u2019ll oppose Boutier. Noh and Lauren Coughlin, who have been key for the U.S., will need to continue their fine play. Noh halved an important match with Yin on Friday and had four birdies in a 1-up win with Andrea Lee on Saturday. The 33-year-old Coughlin is the lone American who will play in all five matches. She was a part of three wins before she and Khang fell to Stark and Grant in fourball on Friday.<\/p>\n
Kupcho might hear it from fans all day on Sunday. She said she was being playful with the shushing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of just comes with it. It kind of comes in the moment,\u201d Kupcho said. \u201cI definitely don\u2019t think about it over a putt. Think we kind of talked about it in the team room that we needed to get out there and play our game and try and calm down the crowd of how loud it was getting after the morning matches. From that little pep talk, it kind of just came in the moment. I was able to make a putt, and it felt right and that\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she was able to make a couple more crowd-silencing putts to give the U.S. momentum for Sunday.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CROMVOIRT, Netherlands \u2014 Jennifer Kupcho shushed the pro-European crowd by putting her index finger to her mouth to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-889785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}