GAINESVILLE, Va. – After hesitating, Alison Lee answered.
“I mean, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t really talked to her at all since then,” Lee said Tuesday as part of the Solheim Cup pre-tournament news conferences.
Lee was referring to Suzann Pettersen, who is a captain for the second time in two years. The European sideBut this has nothing to do with 2024 or 2023. It goes back nine years, to the 2015 matches, when Lee made his cup debut.
She was 20 years old at the time, an LPGA rookie who had excelled as a college player at UCLA and a world-class amateur player.
Thanks to a top-10 performance near the bottom of qualifying, Lee made the team on merit. She was the only Solheim Cup debutant on either team.
On day two in St. Leon-Rot, Germany, with the U.S. trailing by 4 points after three sessions, Lee and Brittany Lincicome faced Pettersen and Charley Hull in fourballs in the afternoon.He On the first hole, Lee had a birdie putt that put his team up with one to play. He missed and then picked up his ball from inside 2 feet.
Tears and tension after the controversial end of the match
The resumption of the suspended Solheim Cup fourballs ended in tears, controversy and confusion on Sunday morning.
Pettersen protested that he was not allowed a par putt and an official agreed, awarding the hole to the European, who took the 18th.He So to win, 2 up.
Pettersen was defiant. Lee and Hull cried. The Americans — and even some Europeans, including Laura Davies, Pettersen’s vice-captain on this year’s and last year’s teams but a commentator for the 2015 games — were outraged.
“I would say at the time it was tough. I felt very intimidated at the time, like I said. I was a rookie on tour. I didn’t really know any of the girls on my team either. I wasn’t very good friends with them,” Lee said Tuesday.
“I felt like a new, young girl who made it onto the team and thankfully everyone was supportive, warm and welcoming and did everything they could to support me.”
The rally came as the United States used the motivation to win the singles session by 5 points and capture the cup for the first time in six years.
That was Lee’s first and, so far, only Solheim Cup experience.
Pettersen, under mounting criticism, issued an apology for the incident on Monday after the matches. The incident was eventually forgotten, as Pettersen authored the defining moment of her career and, arguably, Solheim Cup history with a decisive goal in 2019.
Being the captain of the European Championships that managed to retain the cup last year only reinforced the positive aspects of her legacy.
For Lee, the past nine years have been a bit of everything, from agonizing to tantalizing.
She lost and regained her LPGA card but has not won on the tour. She did, however, claim her second Ladies European Tour victory last October, months after receiving a call from U.S. captain Stacy Lewis to advise her that Lee would not receive a selection for the 2023 team.
“I was very heartbroken when Stacy called me and talked to me and told me I wasn’t on the team,” Lee said. “Yeah, that really motivated me to have a really good year this year.”
She started working to get it. The team of 24 (the cup is contested in consecutive years in order to follow an even-numbered calendar) with three runners-up finishes at the end of last season.
This campaign started off with difficulty, as she suffered a bite from her boyfriend’s dog that forced her to go to the hospital and miss the first three races. When she returned, she was tied for 51st place.street In Singapore, he immediately wondered if all the progress he had made just months earlier had simply… disappeared.
Those fears were immediately allayed when she finished in the top 10 in her next two tournaments. And though she is still seeking her first Tour title, she played well enough to earn a spot on the U.S. team and avoid a phone call (lucky or not) from returning captain Lewis.
Nine years later, Lee is 29 and has five teammates older than her, six younger than her, and she knows them all. Every assistant captain and even Lewis herself were part of that victorious 2015 team. In fact, Lee and Lexi Thompson are the only current American players to have ever experienced a Solheim Cup victory.
Lee said he doesn’t remember much about his first few games, and what he does remember isn’t overly positive.
“I missed the opening night because I had food poisoning that week. I didn’t have any family there. I didn’t know anyone on the team. I felt like an outsider,” she said.
But it should not be forgotten that after that controversial turning point, a 20-year-old rookie won her singles match, 3-1, against Gwladys Nocera. And the United States won, by one point.
“Being able to play on the team now, being more familiar with all the girls and being really good friends with all of them, even though it’s only my second time, makes me feel like a veteran here because I’ve been on tour for so long and I’ve played alongside these girls for so long,” Lee said.
“Definitely a very different experience.”
