In this day and age you cannot make someone captain of a Solheim Cup side simply because she has been around for a long time and it is her turn. True, Catriona Matthews, who captained the winning sides of 2019 and 2021, fitted the bill on that score. However, she also had played in the match on nine occasions and, observant soul that she is, had a good understanding of the whys and wherefores of every incident along the way.
In one sense at least, Suzann Pettersen, who was announced recently as the European captain for 2023, can go one better. She, too, played in nine matches, while she not only is au fait with all the incidents but had instigated what was arguably the biggest incident of all. Namely the one at St Leon Rot in 2015 where she claimed the 17th hole in the Saturday four-balls when Alison Lee, from the ranks of the Americans, snatched up her ball – it was gimme distance away – without so much as a “by-your-leave.”
Pettersen and her partner went on to win their point, but so embarrassed were the rest of the team by what the older player had done that they did not have the heart for the singles. From having been four points clear going into that last series, Team Europe ended up losing the match to the tune of 14½-13½.
Such is Pettersen’s more admirable side that she was forgiven for her unthinking move long before she made the 6-footer which won the match for Europe in 2019. (It helped, of course, that she had not taken too long to realise the error of her ways and issue a heartfelt apology.)
“In 20 years of competitive golf, I had never switched off. Yes, I had injury problems but, when you’re injured, your golfing brain keeps grinding.”
Suzann Pettersen
You might find it tough to believe that the Solheim Cup would sire as many incidents as it does, but such is their frequency that the last thing you would want is a captain who is the proverbial soft touch. Pettersen, judging by the way she stood her ground that day in Germany, is anything but a soft touch. What is more, she is possibly the only person who has what it takes to follow Matthew.
As Alex Armas, chief executive of the Ladies European Tour, said before Christmas, her “competitive fire” would be an inspiration to the team and to fans around the world.
Felicity Johnson, who had a top-30 finish in the recent Race to the Costa del Sol, describes Pettersen as a player who can sound a little scary sometimes but is not without a great sense of humour: ”As well as that, she was very supportive of me when I first played in the US. She saw me working on something on a Wednesday and told me straight off that I should have done that work on the Monday. I’ve always remembered it and it’s worked for me ever since.”
Beth Allen, the American-based Scot who won the LET’s Order of Merit in 2016, came to some of the same conclusions when playing with Pettersen one year at the Evian Championship: “She was a bit intimidating but I liked her a lot and enjoyed her one-liners. She was very confident about her golf but not in a bad way.”
Since the Americans have yet to name their captain for 2023, I asked Allen who she thought would make for the perfect opposite number for this character-and-a-half.
Allen did not hesitate. “Cristie Kerr,” she said. “She and Suzann are much the same in that neither is the kind of person you’d run up and hug but they've both got that extra level of passion and competitiveness and deserve plenty of respect.” Angela Stanford, too, would be on Allen’s list. “A wonderful person and very competitive even now. She’s a whole lot tougher than you might think,” she said.
Yet like many another, Allen suspects the job will go to Stacy Lewis, a major winner who has all her old qualities while becoming a more approachable version of her former self. This mum of one is in touch with all the players who will be fighting for a team place in ’23, while she should earn a few marks for helping her husband, Gerrod Chadwell, in his role as the head coach of the women’s team at Texas A&M. Not just by practising with his charges but by adding a motherly touch in cooking them the odd dinner.
That a motherly touch would seem to have contributed to Petterson’s mellowing is something the Norwegian would explain in an interview of not so long ago. She was not about to claim that motherhood – she has two young children – had made her a different person. It was more to do with how it had given her a bit of space in which to look at herself from the outside.
“In 20 years of competitive golf,” she explained, “I had never switched off. Yes, I had injury problems but, when you’re injured, your golfing brain keeps grinding.”
It was only when she had Herman, her son, that she was able “to step out of the bubble I’d been in and was almost able to laugh at my old intense self.”
Pettersen has a winning smile but she has a winning stare to match. Rather like Ian Poulter’s, it can be applied where necessary.
Golfing rivals may or may not have been on the receiving end but the odd journalist certainly has. In which connection, there came a moment at the 2015 Evian when, with various writers wary of asking Pettersen a few follow-on questions from that year’s Solheim, an old-school journalist, one who had worked in war zones, offered to help out.
Though this most obliging of fellows was armed with all the right questions, it took but a single stare to leave him stuttering to the point where he could not deliver them.
Top: Suzann Pettersen of Norway has had her share of highs and lows in nine Solheim Cups.
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