The Solheim Cup is everything the Ryder Cup is not: unpredictable and world’s best play in it

Men’s transatlantic contest is all too samey and diminished by great LIV split but the women’s match is genuinely competitive home and away

Naturally, when it came to deeming which of the “biennial” matches would have to move to ensure that the two team contests between Europe and USA do not clash again there was only one decisive factor – money.
In fact, there was not even a discussion, never mind a debate. The Solheim Cup simply felt obliged to step out of the way of the financial behemoth that is the Ryder Cup and that is why, just 12 months after the last transatlantic confrontation, there is another showdown in the US capital this week.
Last year, as a consequence of the Ryder Cup’s Covid postponement in 2020, the Solheim was staged directly before its male equivalent and inevitably – in regards, to exposure anyway – found itself withering in the shadows.
Stacey Lewis, the US captain, thought it a huge missed opportunity and declared there should have been greater interaction between the two matches, certainly in a marketing sense. Yet, although the Ladies European Tour could have been more proactive, insiders told Telegraph Sport that the Ryder Cup had its multimillion dollar sponsorships and was not prepared to compromise these contracts.
So, please, move aside if you will, ladies. Let the big boys hog the spotlight. Even if there is quite enough for two.
Hey ho, it was not the first time. When 9/11 enforced a year’s delay in 2001 – as the likes of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson refused to travel over to the Belfry a fortnight after the atrocity – the matches were held in the same month and again it was the Solheim which was shifted, going back-to-back in Minnesota and Malmo. A no-brainer.
The audience and revenue dictated that the men had their pick and despite the even-year placement not entirely suiting the Ryder Cup – essentially, because it meant that every other match would see it follow a month after that even bigger dollar-fest known as the Olympics – they would not have dared risk upsetting the integrity of the two-year cycle.
Now the Ryder Cup is back in the odds, the accountants are delighted. They are the biggest show in town next summer. And the Solheim? Well, the women should just be grateful to have any publicity whatsoever after copying the format when coming into existence 35 years ago. That is the order of professional golf.
Except, a dispassionate comparison of the matches as regards the actual sport and not the income, does not cast the Ryder Cup in a dominant light at all. Anything but.
Let’s face it, the Ryder Cup has become rather samey.  Europe win in Europe, the Americans win in America and Patrick Reed upsets everyone. There has only been one away victory in the last 20 years and that was labelled a ‘miracle’.
By contrast, in these two decades the Solheim has featured four away victories – from nine matches. The hostess does not necessarily have the mostest, especially in points accumulated.
And the encounters have become excruciatingly tense affairs, with the result invariably on the line until the final hour. The last five Solheims have featured two 14½-13½ scorelines, last year’s 14-14, a 15-13 and a 16½-11½. The 2017 edition was considered a “blowout”, but in Ryder Cups of recent vintage that could have been billed a “nail-biter”.
Indeed, there has not been a closer male scoreline for 12 years.
Why the anomaly? No doubt the greater hostility of the Ryder Cup home crowds is a factor, as is the fact that the respective male captains trick up their home layouts to absurd levels in favour of their teams. Fair enough. It is a competition and those such as Luke Donald are employed to deliver victory.
But for the neutral, and even the partisan, witnessing what are essentially Sunday walkovers is not the edge-of-the-sofa drama it once produced to make it such a globally loved spectacle.
Alas, as the tills continue to ring ever louder, the powers-that-be will not admit that the Ryder Cup will have a problem if it carries on in this yo-yo fashion but, in the meantime, it will become even more reliant on skirmishes in car parks to catch the headlines and retain the interest.
The Solheim leaves the battle on the course as two finely-matched squads produce the thrills in front of galleries that are sometimes annoyingly screeching in all that “USA, USA” guff but which blessedly refrain from some of the sickening abuse we have heard at the Ryder Cup.
In 2025, the stage will be Bethpage Black and the most we can hope for is that the drunken New York zoo does not boil over into something ugly.
That would never be a fear at the Solheim, just as we are unlikely to witness cossetted millionaires insisting they should get paid for playing for the flag as we did in Rome 12 months ago. Since LIV and its unlimited resources have emerged, some of the male superstars have become yet more entitled and have lost all perspective. Again, not at the Solheim.
And there is another difference. With Jon Rahm not certain to be eligible for next year and with a few of the American LIV rebels certain to be upset by their exclusion, the Ryder Cup cannot boast the best of Europe versus the best of the United States.
The Solheim can and will and from Friday, Washington DC may well boast another enthralling contest that is tight enough to demand a recount.