Margarita Fernández Pascual called me and last week I had the opportunity to experience something I’ve always wanted to do: attend the Solheim Cup as a marshal. I’ve been a volunteer now for ten days doing tournaments in the European Tour, mostly in Andalusia (Open de Andalusia, Volvo World Match Play, Andalusia Masters…) and many other Opens de España. Golf is my passion and I feel honored to have the opportunity to see a championship from such a privileged position. As you already know, it’s for love of the art, but it’s also a growing experience.
By luck of the draw, on Sunday morning, when we had the marshals meeting, they told me I would be in charge of the end of the game of four-ball between Petterson and Hull against Lee and Lincicome. Without getting involved, I was witness to a big controversy in the tournament, a controversy, by the way, which in my opinion, live and in person, didn’t seem that bad.
I’ll tell you just what I saw during that moment. I was the ‘walking marshal’, in other words, the person in charge of controlling the public so they don’t get too close to the golfers and to mark the balls shot from the tee. For example, on the 17th hole, precisely, I had to wait for Brittany Lincicome to tell her where her ball had landed exactly before going into the water.
Well then, at the moment in which Alison Lee was putting for birdie, I was on the short rough of the green, just at the starting point, outside the scenes shown on tv. My position was perfect for observing what happened because I just happened to be right next to the referee. This is what I saw and heard:
Lee does a medium-long putt for birdie and left the ball for par I would say about fifty centimeters out. Lee went straight for the ball and it’s true that Hull moved, but without anyone having told her anything, the American golfer grabs the ball with her club. At that point in time, it’s the referee who says something like “one moment”. He goes to Alison and says: I don’t think they gave you the putt, did they? Lee stands still, the referee turns around and asks Suzann Pettersen, who was at the beginning of the green: “Did you give her the putt?” to which the Norwegian golfer responds with the truth: “no”.
The referee then proceeds to give Lee the penalty and announces the result as a victory for the European team. That was it. That’s how it happened. It was the referee who took the initiative. Pettersen could have told the referee that they gave Lee the putt, but she would have been lying because nobody told her anything. Thus, in my point of view, as a direct witness, Pettersen didn’t do anything wrong.
I was also able to witness the first head to head between Juli Inkster and Carin Koch on the 18th hole after what happened on the green on the 17th. The US captain, accompanied by a man, went over to Koch and told her in a very bitter tone that what they did was not fair, to which the European responded very angrily that they couldn’t do anything, that it was a decision made by the referee.
Just after, in the marshals meeting, they said that Alison Lee had already grabbed the ball before they gave her the hole on at least three separate occasions before what happened with Pettersen and Hull and that the Europeans had let it slide. I know that Lincicome said that wasn’t true, but I’m telling you what some of the volunteers of the Solheim Cup said.
I really like being a marshal because I love golf and I don’t want, nor am I looking to be in the spotlight, in fact I don’t like it, but this time I wanted to voice my opinion of my version of the story of what really happened. I couldn’t resist because I’ve read and seen many things that were said that weren’t true.
