There was a moment on Sunday at the Solheim Cup where there seemed to be a good chance that Lexi Thompson may get the opportunity to win the point which would seal victory for USA in Virginia.
Europe’s fightback in the singles gave Stacy Lewis’ side a good scare, but it also meant that Lewis had to look further down her list for the hero who was going to take USA to the 14.5 points they needed to regain the Solheim Cup.
And of course, plenty would have noticed that Lexi Thompson’s match with Celine Boutier was looking set to go right down to the wire, with the Frenchwoman fighting back from being three down early on in the back nine.
Ultimately, it was not to be for Thompson. Lewis could not even watch Thompson’s tricky putt on 18, and it appeared that the 29-year-old could not hide her emotions as Boutier subsequently capitalised on a brilliant approach to win the match.
Brandel Chamblee praises Lexi Thompson after potential Solheim Cup farewell
Thankfully for Thompson, the US were still able to get the job done with Lilia Vu holing the winning putt shortly after.
There was extra significance in this year’s Solheim Cup, with Thompson set to retire from full-time golf at the end of the year. She has now made seven appearances in the competitions, winning 10 matches along the way.
And speaking on Golf Channel after the US’s victory, Brandel Chamblee spoke of his admiration for Thompson and praised her decision to call time on this stage of her career.
“I think most everybody, I would think, was pretty surprised when she announced her retirement because she’s still so young and still so competitive. She was eighth on the money list just a couple of years ago, she had a top 10 in a major this year,” he said.
“But it takes a lot of courage to admit that perhaps your best golf is behind you, or maybe you don’t have the all-consuming fire to get out there every single week which is necessary to compete at the highest level. It takes a lot of courage to be able to admit that, and whatever the next chapter has in store for her, the whole world of golf wishes her all the best because she’s handled the ups very well, but also all those downs and all that scrutiny, I think she’s handled it with a lot of grace.
“I never saw her throw clubs or bellyache or moan about it, and she’s had a lot of different things happen to her that are unbelievable; four shot penalty in a major when it looked like it was yours to win and nobody else was going to take it. Just out of nowhere, she had some short misses that are big scar tissues, she never moaned about it or bellyached about it, she handled it with a lot of grace.”
Further chapters will surely be written with no fairytale ending this time
It is hard to imagine that Thompson will not return at some stage, with Chamblee noting how young she still is. Three of her teammates at this year’s Solheim Cup are actually older than the one-time major champion.
Some expect Thompson to return at some point in the future, and she certainly did not disgrace herself at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, with the highlight obviously being the victory alongside Lauren Coughlin on Saturday morning.
There will surely be part of Thompson that wishes she got the fairytale ending of holing the winning putt on her way out of the Solheim Cup – as Suzann Pettersen famously did in 2019 – but that probably will not matter a great deal now that the trophy is remaining on American soil for the next two years.
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