The Junior Solheim Cup delivered a nail-biter to match its senior counterpart’s hype this week. Team USA built what looked like an insurmountable lead through the first two sessions, then had to survive a genuine scare in singles as Europe put together one of the best comeback runs in the event’s history. When it was over, the Americans had retained the Cup, 13-11, at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands — the same course that hosts this week’s Solheim Cup.
Monday: USA Builds a Seven-Point Cushion
The damage was done early. Team USA, captained by Morgan Pressel, won the opening foursomes session 5-1, with three of those six matches decided at the 18th hole.
“We won 18 three times this morning, which was huge,” Pressel said.
The Americans followed that up with a 4½-1½ win in fourballs, taking a 9½-2½ lead into Tuesday’s singles — a seven-point cushion that would end up being the whole ballgame.
Tuesday: Europe’s Furious Rally Falls Just Short
Team USA needed only 2½ points from 12 singles matches to clinch. It took most of the day to find them. Eliana Saga throttled Adriana Garcia Terol 4-and-3, Madeleine Conser blew past Lana Guyot 5-and-4, and Kelly Zhang closed out a 2-up win over Carolina Pérez-Tasso to get the Americans over the line.
Everything else belonged to Europe. Anne van Dam’s squad won eight of the other nine singles matches and halved the ninth — a run that briefly made the largest comeback in the event’s 14-edition history a real possibility.
The match everyone will remember sat at the top of the board. Asterisk Talley, the world’s No. 1 amateur, was 2 up on Annabel Peaford through 14 holes and lost three of the last four, with Peaford closing it out via a birdie at 18 to win 1 up. Had that result landed an hour earlier in the day, the closing stretch would have been a lot more uncomfortable for the U.S. side.
Final singles score: Europe 8½, United States 3½. Final match score: United States 13, Europe 11.
A First for Both Cups
This marked the first time the PING Junior Solheim Cup and the Solheim Cup have been played on the same course in the same week — the juniors went Monday and Tuesday, with the pros taking over the Kyle Phillips design Friday through Sunday (Anna Nordqvist captaining Europe, Angela Stanford leading the U.S.).
There was a second first tied to the week: Van Dam served as Junior Solheim Cup captain while simultaneously working as one of Nordqvist’s Solheim Cup vice-captains — nobody had held both roles at once before. Bronte Law, a former Junior Solheim Cup teammate of Van Dam’s, served as her assistant.
Why It Matters
The result pushes the U.S. to 9-4-1 all-time in the series, following an 18½-5½ rout at Army Navy Country Club in 2024. And the alumni list keeps making the case for why this event matters for junior golfers eyeing the next level — Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson, Charley Hull and Carlota Ciganda all played in the Junior Solheim Cup before graduating to the senior version. With the two events now sharing a venue and a week for the first time, this year’s 24 juniors got a closer look than ever at what that jump actually looks like.
One format note worth flagging for families tracking eligibility: the Junior Solheim Cup caps participants at ages 12-18, and college golfers are ineligible regardless of age — worth keeping in mind for players and parents mapping out the recruiting timeline around events like this one.