The first controversy, if you could call it such a thing, at the 20th Solheim Cup didn’t seem to be much of a controversy, if you could call it such a thing, until a reporter posed this innocent question:
Why was Charley Hull, Team Europe’s biggest star, late for her Tuesday-morning practice round at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands?
The query was directed at Europe’s captain, Anna Nordqvist, and her three lieutenants, Caroline Hedwall, Mel Reid and Anne van Dam, at their captain’s press conference.
Nordqvist leaned in.
“Do you want to do this one, Mel?”
Reid did, because, as she saw it, she had some rumors to quash.
“This could be a full story,” Reid began. “Charley Hull was the first one to bed last night at 8 o’clock and first one on the bus this morning. She doesn’t even drink, so that’s a completely false story it’s been misquoted. She was late to the tee because I was responsible for her, so I’ll take a little bit of responsibility to that. But she just thought her tee time was a little bit later, and trying to drag Charley Hull off a driving range is a feat in any tournament, especially a Solheim. So yeah it’s a completely false story.”
The reported seemed puzzled.
“I wasn’t aware there was a false story,” he said. “I was just aware she was late on the tee.”
“Yeah, well, late on the tee,” Reid said. “But there’s actually a story behind it, so I just want to shut this down before it gets, before other people start talking about it. But she was literally late because, one, I couldn’t drive drag her off the driving range, and, two, she thought her tee time was five minutes later than it was.”
The “false story” to which Reid was referring had been sparked — where else? — on social media by a Sky Sports clip that showed Hull hurriedly going off the first tee Tuesday, with her would-be playing partners a couple of minutes ahead of her. After Hull hit her tee shot in front of a smattering of fans and officials, she smiled and looked back down the tee box. It’s difficult to discern what she said, but in the video clip a Sky commentator laughs and says, “Oh my word! Charley’s giving us a little reason why she’s a little bit late this morning.”
That reason seemingly became clear in the caption on the Sky Sports post, which reads, ‘We had drinks last night!’ Charley Hull reveals the reason for her late arrival to the first tee.’
The caption, it seems, was not meant to be read literally — more jokingly. But Reid, for one, felt some observers might have misinterpreted its meaning, which led to her to address the episode in no uncertain terms.
After Reid had provided context, Nordqvist jumped in to provide more clarity.
“I was on the first tee this morning and obviously I told the first three girls to go because there’s a little bit of a hike given that we start on the third hole and not the course No. 1 this week,” she said. “So it takes a good, five, 10 minutes to get out there. So I told the first tee, like go ahead and then Charley would just catch up. Because we knew she was on the way.”
In short: Nothing to see here, folks.
Which, of course, won’t be the case should any players be tardy to their tee times when play begins in earnest. If a player is up to 5 minutes late for a starting time, the penalty in match play is loss of hole. And more than 5 minutes? Disqualification.
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