With the late U.S. win in Saturday fourball on the strength of Jennifer Kupcho’s incredible putting, the U.S. forged an 8-8 tie with Europe, and the 12 players will now go head-to-head in singles to decide who holds the Cup. As the defending champions, the Americans need six points to at least earn a tie and retain the trophy.

The pairings have been established, and in the very first match, Europe’s top-ranked player, Charley Hull, who is winless this week, will take on American sparkplug Megan Khang. The anchor 12th match, if it were to come down to the end, pits Rose Zhang against Celine Boutier.

U.S captain Angela Stanford slotted World No. 1 Nelly Korda in the No. 4 spot and she will take on Mimi Rhodes. And for the most fiery matchup? That one’s easy. Kupcho against Europe stalwart Carlota Ciganda in the penultimate pairing. It'd be tremendous theater if they could go the distance. 

Cameras caught "Aunty Nelly" happily being a “babysitter” on the first tee as the group introductions were made. To which one poster replied, "Maybe you could actually get her on the golf course." But benching herself on Day 2 is a standard procedure for the American star, who has now played only one best-ball match in each of her five appearances for Team USA. The strategy would seem to be that Korda, 27, gets some rest before singles. That has worked at a 50-percent clip. She won singles in her first two appearances, but has lost the last two, including a 6-and-4 rout at the hands of Charley Hull in 2024. Most impressive has been the grit shown by American Lauren Coughlin, who will play in five matches at the age of 33.

But the event is also doubling as a mini-training camp for the two Presidents Cup teams getting set to play at Medinah the following week. Three of Brandt Snedeker’s 12 charges will be competing—Justin Thomas, Jackson Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman—while five International players will tee it up (Nico Echavarria, Ryo Hisatsune, Corey Conners, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Nick Taylor). The event is taking place at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in Asheville, N.C.

The 26-year-old Swede has holed out twice for eagle at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands. The first came in morning foursomes, playing with Linn Grant, when Stark chipped in for eagle on the short par 4 eighth hole, en route to defeating Nelly Korda and Allisen Corpuz, 3 and 2 and giving the powerful American duo its first loss in six starts together.

Then in her afternoon fourball match, again paired with Grant as they faced Megan Khang and Lauren Coughlin, Stark holed out from the fairway on the first hole to go 1-up instantly.

Lottie Woad is playing in her first Solheim Cup while Charley Hull is competing for the eighth time. Ranked seventh and eighth in the Rolex Ranking respectively, Woad and Hull are the highest-ranked players on Europe’s squad. Nordqvist put the two together for each of the three first matches. They lost foursomes 4 and 3 to Nelly Korda and Allisen Corpuz in the first match, tied Yealimi Noh and Angel Yin in Friday’s fourball, and then lost, 6 and 5, to Lauren Coughlin and Alison Lee in Saturday’s foursomes. Still, Nordqvist is keeping the pairing together and has sent them out together again Saturday afternoon. Woad and Hull are playing Noh and Andrea Lee in Saturday afternoon fourball. “I'm really proud that they fought and I see no reason why not to play them today,” Nordqvist said on Saturday before the completion of the morning match.

The 33-year-old American teamed with Alison Lee to dominate Europe’s top duo of Charley Hull and Lottie Woad, 6 and 5, in Saturday morning foursomes.

Coughlin improved to 5-0-2 in Solheim Cup matches. Her .867 winning percentage is the highest in Solheim Cup history among players who have at least five matches.

“I feel like all I had to do was just sit back and watch the Lauren show," Lee said. "She hit some incredible shots into greens, made some incredible putts as well, so it was a lot of fun.”

Coughlin and Lee combined to give Hull (who has 15 career wins and is playing in her eighth Solheim Cup) the largest defeat of her career.

Coughlin has played with World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Alison Lee in matches thus far at Bernardus Golf, and no matter her teammate, she’s helped make it a winning combination. “This is is the best week we play every two years,” Coughlin said. “It's been electric out here. It's super loud. Wouldn't mind quieting it down just a little bit, but it's been awesome.”

It’s the first time in 20 editions of the matches that both sessions ended 2-2. Weird. But Charley Hull and Lottie Woad, Europe’s two best players, went 0-1-1 together. Rookies contributed on the European side and World No. 1 Nelly Korda went 1-0-1 playing with Allisen Corpuz and Lauren Coughlin. So, yes, it’s tight with two days remaining. Here are morning foursomes pairings for early Saturday at Bernardus Golf Club. (Keep in mind that east coast time is six hours earlier than those posted here, so do the math!)

This is the 20th Solheim Cup and history was made Friday at Bernardus Golf Club in the Netherlands. The morning foursomes session was a 2-2 tie after the U.S. won two and Europe won two. In the afternoon fourballs each side one a match outright and two were halved, the last coming via an incredible par by Carlota Ciganda on the 18th green. Furthermore, the fact that two Day 1 ties hasn’t happened in the Ryder Cup in more than 60 years is odd too. We know the math of these team matches—four matches a session and 12 singles on Sunday—and you’d think that ties historically would've happened more often. Nope.

She was reminded of that when TV commentator Tom Abbott interviewed Lee and Megan Khang after their afternoon 4-and-3 fourball win at the Solheim Cup. “At the start of the year, you and I were co-workers,” Lee reminded Abbott with a smile.

Impressively, Lee qualified for the U.S. team with a strong season, and she opened the Solheim by going 2-0 with two different partners. “It means so much,” Lee said. “It was really, really hard to get here. A lot of long days trying to practice, sleepless nights, just trying to do my best to be the best mom I can as well. To make it here and to be here putting two points on the board for USA is, is awesome.”

On Friday morning at the Irish Open, Richard Mansell bounced back from opening-round 76 with a Doonbeg-course-record 63. The 13-shot turnaround helped Mansell make the cut and put him in the driver's for the $30,000 low-round-of-week bonus, but the latter didn't stick. Just a few hours later, Shane Lowry one-upped Mansell (literally), firing a 62 to put his name at the top of not only the leaderboard, but the Doonbeg record books.

The native Irishman now sits at 11-under heading into the weekend, three strokes clear of Haotong Li and Jacob Olesen in second. Mansell, meanwhile, find himself at one-under par, 10 strokes back of Lowry in a tie for 36th.

The 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is an opportunity to revisit some of Golf Digest’s journalism covering  the event and its aftermath. Among those stories is the late Tim Rosaforte and Bill Fields’ profile of Jimmy Dunne, then a relatively unknown Wall Street financier who survived the attacks when most of his colleagues perished, and is now considered one of the most influential figures in the game.