Lone Stars

On late Sunday afternoon U.S. Solheim Cup captain Judy Rankin stood by the cemetery gate next to the 18th green at the St. Pierre Golf Club in Chepstow, Wales. Her sweater reeking from a champagne dousing, she tried to explain how her team had risen, overnight, to become a singular sensation. The Americans had won nine of 12 singles matches and halved two others for a 17-11 victory over an upset-minded but weary European side, thereby retaining the only transatlantic golf trophy still in American hands. "I thought having everyone's nervous system in good shape was very important," Rankin said. "I wanted to do everything I could to preserve our advantage in the singles."

The advantage she referred to was the Americans' perceived superiority at individual match play. In the previous Solheim Cup, at The Greenbrier in West Virginia in 1994, the U.S. team won eight of 10 singles matches on the final day to regain the Cup, lost two years before at Dalmahoy, Scotland. This time, with two more players added to each team and two sessions of pairs matches tacked on (to duplicate the format of the men's Ryder Cup), the Europeans had to contend with their opponents' greater depth. European captain Mickey Walker responded by using Laura Davies, Annika Sorenstam, Liselotte Neumann and Catrin Nilsmark (ranked 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 26th, respectively, on the LPGA money list) in the maximum five matches. That left her "lesser" players—Dale Reid, Joanne Morley and an underrated Lisa Hackney—to lead cheers and nurse their stage fright before getting into the fray on Saturday afternoon. The result, if not predictable, was telling: The European stars looked drained on Sunday, with only Sorenstam providing a singles win.

"I think Mickey could have used Lisa Hackney a little more," Rankin said at the cemetery gate, her own fatigue showing. "Since singles were their Achilles' heel the last time, my strategy might have been to make sure my guns could go on Sunday."

In fact, that was Rankin's strategy. She rested her ace, Dottie Pepper, on Saturday afternoon, and Pepper responded on Sunday with a 3-and-2 win over the formidable Englishwoman Trish Johnson. In other key matches well-rested Hall of Famer Betsy King, who had sat out two sessions, beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France 5 and 4; Rosie Jones smoked the uncertain Morley 5 and 4; and Beth Daniel, despite an uncooperative putter, played a sleepwalking Neumann to a tie. In the biggest match of the day, the match that silenced the loud but respectful galleries, rising American star Michelle McGann dispatched the awesome Davies 3 and 2. McGann's clinching blow—a three-wood shot that never left the flag on the postcard-pretty par-3 16th—deflated the host team and left many of the fans with nothing to comment on except the fine, blustery weather and the magnificent horse chestnuts lining St. Pierre's fairways.

"Playing 36 a day took its toll on their tough players," Daniel said after her Sunday match. "Lotta was just dragging around the golf course."

Human frailty, of course, is the theme at these team events. The pretournament buzz, orchestrated by the always obliging British media, centered on Davies's penchant for fast cars and blackjack tables, and Pepper's alleged resemblance to the national symbol of Wales, a red dragon. The Davies story—that she had lost some three quarters of a million dollars gambling in recent years—was greeted with a shrug and a collective "Ah, well," since it was in her just-published autobiography and because Davies is so lovable. The two-year-old Pepper flap, however, throbbed like a toe injury. "Reprehensible behaviour!" fulminated The Guardian, still livid over Pepper's breach of etiquette at the 1994 Solheim Cup, when she celebrated a missed putt by Davies by punching the air and shouting, "Yeah!" The Daily Star called Pepper "wild-eyed Dottie." No, retorted The Daily Express, she was "Vesuvius."

No doubt awed by their own hype, the journalists turned meek when Pepper showed up for a practice-round press conference. Or maybe they were confused by her affable manner. In any event the would-be Saint Georges stammered a few trite questions and saved their stuff for headlines like the one in Friday's Guardian: SOLHEIM NO PLACE FOR DOTTIE BEHAVIOUR.

The British, ironically, celebrate dotty behavior, and there was some of that in evidence at St. Pierre. A handful of partisans on both sides literally wrapped themselves in their countries' flags, so that they resembled candidates for burial at sea. Several spectators wore giant Cat in the Hat toppers, and the crowd in the bleachers behind the 1st tee carried on like a schoolgirl chorus on holiday, sending off the players with impromptu renditions of The Marseillaise, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain.

The featured players showed more restraint but still justified their leading roles. Pepper steadied the Americans on the first day, pairing with Brandie Burton for a foursomes (alternate-shot) victory in the morning and birdieing five of six holes in one stretch of an afternoon four-ball (better-ball) win while offending no one. Davies struggled out of the gate, playing erratically in a Friday-morning foursomes loss to Patty Sheehan and Jones. ("Who would have thought that two little peewees would beat the big Laura?" asked Sheehan, coyly minimizing her own Hall of Fame credentials.) Thereafter Davies was Goliath, partnering Johnson in a 6-and-5 four-ball rout of Kelly Robbins and Pat Bradley and a 4-and-3 dismantling of Sheehan-Jones in Saturday's foursomes, and joining Hackney in a 6-and-5 walloping of Daniel and Val Skinner on Saturday afternoon. Davies's most astonishing stretch came in the Friday four ball when she birdied seven of 13 holes and narrowly missed a double eagle on the 309-yard 8th, where her tee shot brushed the pin. "It was unbelievable, a clinic," said Bradley. "I was sorry to bear the brunt of it, but I had to admire what was taking place."

Davies's heroics led a European surge that had Rankin and her team questioning their strategy. The teams were not playing to type, for one thing. Friday morning's foursomes, played under a gray sky suitable for a pistol duel, was a great surprise, with the Americans taking a 3½-½ lead. (The alternate-shot format, in which partners share one ball, seems vaguely socialistic to American golfers, and the U.S. women had played it ineffectively at Dalmahoy and The Greenbrier.) At lunch the Europeans paced morosely in their team room until Solheim rookie Kathryn Marshall, a vivacious Scot, cranked up a CD called We've Got the Power. "They all looked so sad and quiet," Marshall explained later. "I just wanted to gee them up." The sweeter music was the unheralded Marshall's play in the afternoon. She contributed four birdies as she and Sorenstam beat Skinner and Jane Geddes, one up. By nightfall the Europeans had narrowed the gap to 5-3.