DEN BOSCH, Netherlands \u2014 Lottie Woad assured it. Carlota Ciganda sealed it.<\/p>\n
Vamos! The\u00a0Solheim Cup\u00a0is back in the hands of Team Europe.<\/p>\n
The blue wave came early in the Sunday singles at Bernardus Golf and never went away, all the way through to Woad holing a putt from two feet on No. 17 to win her match and guarantee the Europeans would reach the 14 1\/2 points needed to reclaim the crystal trophy from the United States.<\/p>\n
Woad punched the air and jumped into the arms of her teammates who flooded onto the green in celebration.<\/p>\n
The point that officially took Europe to its victory target in the Netherlands was secured by \u2014 who else? \u2014 Ciganda about 10 minutes later.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, who got the\u00a0decisive point\u00a0when Europe retained the Solheim Cup in 2023, completed a 4-and-2 victory over Jennifer Kupcho, a feisty American who had roared \u201cVamos!\u201d (“Let’s go!”) when holing an\u00a0outrageous 93-foot putt\u00a0on the way to beating Ciganda in a spiky four-balls match on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I was really motivated to beat her,\u201d Ciganda said, \u201cbecause I knew it was going to be important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strains of \u201cOl\u00e9, Ol\u00e9, Ol\u00e9, Ol\u00e9\u201d drifted across the course as the last matches finished and the European team and staff celebrated with Champagne.<\/p>\n
Captain Anna Nordqvist, her assistants as well as the players and their caddies formed a line, put their arms over one another\u2019s shoulders, and walked as one up the 18th fairway toward the green where Celine Boutier \u2014 the remaining European player on the course \u2014 was wrapping up her match.<\/p>\n
When Boutier finished, she piled into the mass celebrations.<\/p>\n
The final score: Europe 15, the United States 13.<\/p>\n
The Europeans have now won three of the last five editions, the only loss in that stretch coming in Virginia two years ago. The U.S. team didn’t have possession of the trophy for long and is still without a win on the road since 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Europeans played great today, and that\u2019s the way it goes,\u201d U.S. captain Angela Stanford said. \u201cSo their backs were against the wall, they had nothing to lose, and that\u2019s exactly what they did \u2014 they came out and played well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The teams were tied at 8-8 after two days and set out Sunday in heavy rain for the 12 singles matches, with Europe going out fast, putting blue all over the scoreboard and ultimately winning six of the first eight matches. Ciganda, in Match 11, added the crucial other victory.<\/p>\n
Early wins for Charley Hull and Linn Grant laid the platform for victory, the only wobble for Europe coming when U.S. player Alison Lee came from four down after 11 holes to beat Esther Henseleit, one up, for the greatest comeback in Solheim Cup history.<\/p>\n
Rookies contributed massively for Europe all week and especially Sunday, with Woad, Nastasia Nadaud and Julia Lopez Ramirez all winning matches in the singles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s been one of the best teams that we\u2019ve had in the last few years,\u201d Ciganda said. \u201cEveryone just a unit, a team. That\u2019s what Europe is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. leads the all-time series 11-8, with one draw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEN BOSCH, Netherlands \u2014 Lottie Woad assured it. Carlota Ciganda sealed it. Vamos! The\u00a0Solheim Cup\u00a0is back in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-846557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}