‘Bitter pill to swallow’: Why this Solheim Cup star felt slighted by her own captain

Match play isn’t for every golfer — battling head-to-head for only 18 holes requires a different mindset from 72 holes of stroke play — but the cutthroat format does bring out the best in some players. Tiger and Jack thrived in mano-a-mano matches. Annika and Cristie Kerr, too. Seve and Sergio. Lanny and Monty. P-Reed and Poults.

And then there’s Ireland’s Leona Maguire.

In her first two Solheim Cup appearances, in 2021 and ’23, Maguire played in all five sessions in each contest, racking up a sterling 7-2-1 record. Maguire shined particularly brightly in the pressure cooker that is Sunday singles, taking down Jennifer Kupcho, 5 and 4, in 2021, and Rose Zhang, 4 and 3, in Spain last year. (Earlier this year, Maguire reminded fans of her match-play prowess when she advanced to the finals of the T-Mobile Match Play in Las Vegas, losing to Nelly Korda in the title match.)

“For the last two, my job is to get as many points as possible,” Maguire, who is 29, said earlier this week of the previous two editions of the Solheim Cup. “That’s how I can contribute best to the team, and that’s what I try to do. Again, every Solheim Cup is different, and whatever Suzann wants me to do this week, that’s what I’ll do.”

As in Suzann Pettersen, the European captain.

Pettersen knew what kind of form Maguire was exhibiting heading into this week: middling would be a kind descriptor. Since winning an Aramco Series event in London in early July, Maguire had recorded just one top-15 finish, at the Irish Open earlier this month. This left Pettersen with a difficult decision at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club: play Maguire sparingly and hope that her more in-form teammates could carry the load, or ignore Maguire’s recent performances and ride one of her match-play stallions.

Maguire’s first shot to prove herself came in a Friday afternoon four-ball match with Georgia Hall against World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Megan Khang. Things did not go well. The Europeans made just three birdies and were throttled, 6 and 4.

Pettersen had seen enough. On Saturday, she benched Maguire not once but twice, meaning the Solhiem stalwart who had played 10 matches over the previous two editions of the event would play just two in Virginia. With Europe in an early four-point hole, Pettersen decided to look elsewhere for a spark to ignite her team.

“Nobody can take away Leona’s record, the value that she carries into the European team, playing or not playing,” Pettersen said Saturday evening when asked to explain her thinking. “[But] it ended up being where we kind of stood after yesterday, we kind of had to go by form. Unfortunately, up until now, Leona hasn’t kind of been, I don’t know, the rock that I kind of was hoping for.

“But it surely doesn’t take away anything, and like I told her, she doesn’t have to prove anything to any of us. She’s kind of won us the Solheim the last two times. She has all the reasons to kind of be disappointed, but she also has the character and the guts to say, you know what, fair play, I’m not playing my best, and go play someone else who kind of has a better chance of getting points on the board.”

If Pettersen was looking to put a chip on Maguire’s shoulder, mission accomplished. With Europe still in a four-point hole heading into Sunday singles, Maguire looked in her match against Ally Ewing like a player who had something to prove: to her captains, to her teammates, to the world. Maguire birdied four of her first nine holes to open up a 2-up lead. Six holes later, the match was over — a 4-and-3 drubbing.  

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“I felt like I played great golf today,” Maguire said afterward. “I feel like I’ve been playing really great golf all week in practice, and it was a bitter pill to swallow to be sat out for as many sessions as I was, but I thought I got a point to prove today.”

Had Pettersen explained Maguire’s Saturday benching to Maguire?

“She didn’t give much reason,” Maguire said. “The feeling I got was that I was a little bit too short and didn’t make enough birdies, but I think proved today there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and I think I made plenty of birdies today. Captain’s decision. I’m a team player, and all I could do today was come out and win my point, and that’s what I did.”

Maguire added: “I don’t need any extra motivation to go out and try to win my point, but yeah, there probably was a little bit extra there, not going to lie. But ultimately it’s what’s best for the team this week, and I would have loved the opportunity to try and deliver more points for the team, but I did what I could today.”

For her part, Pettersen said she had no regrets about her tactics.

“I’ve never lived my life regretting any decisions,” she said Sunday evening in the wake of her team’s three-point loss to the Americans. “You’d rather play with your gut feel and your heart. Sometimes you get outplayed. There was a reason why Leona and the lineup in the back was what it was. We know what they’re capable of. We know what they’re facing. If we were going to have a chance at this, we needed all 12 players, and we need — it would have been nice to have an anchor like Leona in the back knowing she can take it and get it done.

“I mean, it’s a 12-woman team, and it’s always going to be hard to do the pairings. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get outplayed. Maybe we could have played other players that maybe could have faced different opponents that could have changed the outcome. You can always look back, but at the same time I don’t think we as a team have any regrets of what we did.”

A reporter pressed Pettersen on her decision, but the captain had little else to say about the matter.

“It’s extremely difficult to sit any players on this team,” she said. “The way it turned out, that’s how it turned out.”

Soon after her singles win, Maguire posted a six-word message on X: “Form is temporary, class is permanent.”