by GAINESVILLE, Va. – After a hesitation, Alison Lee answered.
“I mean, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t really spoken to him since,” Lee said Tuesday during the Solheim Cup pre-tournament news conferences.
Lee was referring to Suzann Pettersen, who for the second time in as many years is captain the european side. But it had nothing to do with 2024 or 2023. It went back nine years, to the 2015 games, when Lee was making his cup debut.
She was 20 years old then, an LPGA rookie, a standout student at UCLA and a world-renowned amateur.
Thanks to her top-10 finish late in qualifying, Lee was selected on her own. She was the only Solheim Cup rookie on either side.
On the second day in St. Leon-Rot, Germany, with the United States trailing by four points after three sessions, Lee and Brittany Lincicome faced Pettersen and Charley Hull in afternoon four-ball matches.th hole, Lee made a birdie putt to give her team a one-point lead with one hole to play. She missed and then retrieved her ball from within 2 feet.
Tears and tension after match ends in controversy
The resumption of the suspended four-ball Solheim Cup ended in tears, controversy and confusion on Sunday morning.
Pettersen protested that the par putt had not been conceded and an official agreed, giving the hole to Euros, who claimed on 18.th also to win, 2 up.
Pettersen was defiant. Lee and Hull were in tears. 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 on the 2015 games – were outraged.
“I would say at the time it was tough. I was very intimidated at the time, like I said. I was a rookie on the circuit. I didn’t really know the girls on my team either. I wasn’t really friends with them,” Lee said Tuesday.
“I felt like a new recruit, a young girl who had made it onto the team. Luckily, everyone rallied around me, was warm and welcoming and did everything they could to support me.”
Rally, they did as the United States used the motivation to win the single session by 5 points and capture the cup for the first time in six years.
It was Lee’s first and, so far, only Solheim Cup experience.
Pettersen, who faced increasing criticism, apologized for the incident on Monday after the games. The incident has been largely forgotten over time, as Pettersen wrote THE defining moment of her career and, arguably, Solheim Cup history with a career-defining goal in 2019.
His captaincy at Euro 2018, which saw him retain the cup, only reinforced the positive aspects of his legacy.
For Lee, the past nine years have been everything from nerve-wracking to tantalizing.
She lost and regained her LPGA card but did not win on the tour. She did, however, claim her second victory on the Ladies European Tour last October, a few months after receiving a call from American captain Stacy Lewis telling her that Lee would not be selected for the 2023 team.
“I was heartbroken when Stacy called me and told me I didn’t make the team,” Lee said. “Yeah, it really motivated me to have a really good year this year.”
She started working on Team ’24 (the cup is contested two consecutive years in order to be able to participate in the calendar of even years) with three finalists to conclude last season.
The campaign got off to a rocky start, as she was bitten by her boyfriend’s dog, which resulted in a hospital stay and no starts in the first three races. Upon her return, she finished tied for 51st.st In Singapore, she immediately wondered if all the progress she had made just a few months earlier had simply… disappeared.
Her fears were immediately allayed by her first two top-10 finishes. And while she’s still chasing her first tour title, she played well enough to earn a spot on Team USA and avoid a phone call – happy or not – from captain Lewis.
Nine years later, Lee is 29 and knows all of her teammates, five older and six younger. All of the alternate captains and even Lewis herself were on that winning team in 2015. In fact, Lee and Lexi Thompson are the only current American players to have won a Solheim Cup.
Lee said she doesn’t remember much about her early games, and what she does remember isn’t particularly positive.
“I missed the opening night gala 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 let’s not forget that the day after this controversial turn, a 20-year-old debutant 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, getting to know all the girls more and being really good friends with all of them, even though it’s only my second time, I feel like a veteran here because I’ve been on tour for so long and played alongside these girls for a long time,” Lee said.
“It’s really a very different experience.”
