NorCal golf fans can be proud of our 2021 Solheim Cup rookies

Despite the fact that the American 2021 Solheim Cup squad went down to a narrow defeat at Inverness Golf Club over the Labor Day weekend, two NorCal players who were making their first Solheim Cup appearances put up performances to be proud of.

Yealimi Noh of Team USA plays her shot from the fifth tee during her Monday Singles match against Mel Reid of England. (photo credit: 2021 Getty Images)

Mina Harigae of Monterey, and Yealimi Noh of Concord—the first a relative veteran and the other early in her career as a professional golfer—acquitted themselves well against a European squad that came to the event in fine form. Harigae is a four-time California Women’s Amateur champion (2001–2004), and Noh won the 2018 USGA Girls’ Junior Championship at Poppy Hills Golf Club, the home of the Northern California Golf Association.

Harigae, who turned pro in 2009, racked up a 1-2-0 record in her first Solheim Cup appearance. She and partner Lexi Thompson dropped their Saturday Fourball match to a dominating performance by Anna Nordqvist and Matilda Castern, and Harigae fell to experienced Solheim Cup hand Céline Boutier (4-0-0 in 2019) in the Monday singles, 4 and 3.

Noh, who is in her second year as a professional, having turned down a golf scholarship to UCLA to go pro at 18, finished the weekend 2-1-0. She was blanked in the Saturday Fourballs when she and playing partner Brittany Altomare lost a close match to Britain’s Georgia Hall and Leona Maguire of Ireland. Maguire dominated the event and set a Solheim Cup record by putting 4-1/2 points on the board for the European team in five matches.

The Monday singles saw Noh pitted against veteran UK player Mel Reid, a pro since 2007 who has played on three Solheim Cup teams: 2011, 2015, and 2017, coming into this year’s event with a 4-6-2 record. The 20-year-old from Alameda ran up an early lead, winning the first four holes against Reid, and fought off a late rally by the 33-year-old from Derby, England, winning the match on the 18th hole.

Harigae and Noh, paired together for a Sunday Fourball match, scored a win against Sophia Popov of Germany and Céline Boutier. The rookie duo established an early lead over their opponents, and were three up at the turn. Boutier and Popov, the 2020 AIG Women’s Open (Women’s British Open) winner, battled back to square the match at the 13th hole, but eventually fell to a renewed onslaught by the NorCal duo, who put up birdies on three of the last four holes against the Euro pair’s run of pars.

The Solheim Cup will return in 2023 at the Finca Cortesín Golf Club in Casares, near Málaga, Spain before switching back to an even-years rotation in 2024 to avoid conflicts with the Ryder Cup. Venues beyond 2023 have not yet been set.

Lexi Thompson’s 2021 U.S. Women’s Open – a tale of two nines

The golf weather gods gave with one hand and took away with the other for today’s final round of the U.S. Women’s Open. The foggy, damp conditions of the previous three days were just a memory as Friday morning dawned sunny and bright—with brisk, blustery winds but otherwise picture-perfect conditions as the final pairing of the day— leader Lexi Thompson; Yuka Sosa, 19, of the Phillipines; and the Low Amateur leader, 17-year-old Megha Ganne—stepped up to the first tee.

Lexi Thompson hits her tee shot on the 12th hole during the final round at the 2021 U.S. Women's Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif. on Sunday, June 6, 2021. (Darren Carroll/USGA)

As the pair of young, talented teenagers with whom she was paired struggled early in the round, Lexi Thompson, a veteran of 14 U.S. Women’s Opens and 36 other major championships, started out strong with a birdie on the par-5 first hole, then stuttering slightly with a bogey on #2. She made up the lost stroke with a birdie on five that was set up by a slingshot from the right rough that caught a good slope and rolled to near kick-in range.

Throughout the front nine Thompson looked cool, confident, and in command of her game, but on the second nine she resembled nothing so much as a front-running race car that was down on power, leaking oil, and struggling to hang on to an early lead.

That apparent command of her game started to drift away on the 11th hole. A wayward drive led to a hard chop out of the left rough that fell short, and was in turn followed by a duffed chip shot that came up short of the green, and a dead-push bogey putt. It was Thompson’s worst hole of the day, a double-bogey six that halved her (then) lead over China’s Shanshan Feng.

Not that her command of her game had totally left her—apparently unfazed by a flyer out of the right rough on #12 that raced through the green and over the back side, she rolled a long-range masterpiece of a putt to kick-in distance to save par.

After a fairly routine par on the par-three 13th hole, more trouble in the deep rough left of the 14th fairway left Thompson chipping on for her third and leaving nearly 16 feet for par—a putt that was spot-on for distance but misread for line by nearly a foot. The resulting bogey cut her lead, once again, to two strokes, now over the trio of Megan Khang, Nasa Hataoka, and Shanshan Feng.

On 15, with room to shoot at a back-center flag, Thompson played short, leaving herself 51 feet for a desperately needed birdie that, true to recent form, she didn’t get.

In the meantime, Thompson’s playing partner Yuka Saso had righted the ship after her par-double-double start, putting up four pars and a birdie to close out her front nine with a 3-over 38. Saso stumbled slightly at 11 with a bogey, but eventually closed strong with birdies on 16 and 17 to finish regulation play, and narrowly missed a potential tournament-winning putt at 18, to finish at four under.

Also moving up fast on the inside was Japan’s Nasa Hataoka, who put up six birdies against a double and a bogey to post 34-34–68, catching up to Thompson at four under as the Floridian approached the final hole.

The death knell for Thompson’s hopes of a 15th-time-lucky U.S. Women’s Open win was her second shot at the par-four 18th hole. From a good lie on the right-hand side of the fairway, she chili-dipped her approach into the deep, bowl-shaped right-front bunker. From a good lie on flat, groomed sand she overshot the tight-front flag, leaving herself a slippery, downhill 11-foot putt that she had to make to join Saso and Hataoka in a playoff.

She missed.

That putt was the climax to the latest in a long line of close calls and missed opportunities for Thompson, whose major championship record now includes three second-place finishes, four third-place finishes, 11 Top-5s, and 17 Top-10s. A certain five-letter word that starts with “c” is being thrown around in the commentary surrounding Lexi Thompson’s performance in this Women’s Open, and being as charitable as possible, it is still hard to argue with.

And those two young, talented teenagers that comprised the rest of Lexi Thompson’s group? Megha Ganne gamed up with a string of pars and one last bogey after a front-nine 41, making a got-to-have-it birdie at #17 to clinch Low Amateur honors. Yuka Saso went on to defeat Nasa Hataoka on the third hole of a playoff, stiffing her approach shot on their second time through #9 and sinking the birdie putt for the win. With this week’s effort she has made history as the first Filipino major champion in golf, and has exactly equaled Inbee Park’s age as youngest U.S. Women’s Open winner from her 2008 win in this event: 19 years, 11 months, 17 days.

Good going, ladies.