Solheim Stuff

Captain Alison Nicholas named her four at-large team members yesterday, completing the Solheim roster for Team Europe.  2010 LPGA Rookie of the Year Azahara Munoz, Karen Stupples, Sandra Gal and Caroline Hedwall were chosen to join Melissa Reid, Laura Davies, Suzann Pettersen, Christel Boeljon (top four in LET points), Catriona Matthew, Maria Hjorth, Anna Nordqvist and Sophie Gustafson (next four highest in Rolex Rankings).  Davies continues her amazing run of having played in every single Solheim competition (12^th appearance dating back to 1990).  I'll analyze the two Solheim teams and make my prediction on the outcome in the next couple of weeks.

It was announced on Friday that the next round of U.S. Solheim selections will include the Rolex Rankings.  Beginning in 2013, the existing system of Solheim points will select the first eight team members (it had been ten) and the next two members will be the highest ranked remaining players in the Rolex system.  The U.S. captain will still have two at-large picks.  I assumed that this tweak of the qualification rules wouldn't change the team too much but decided to take a closer look.

Juli Inkster and Christina Kim were the last two automatic qualifiers.  Using the Rolex Rankings from Monday, August 22 (which would have been the rankings used this year), Inkster was ranked #44 and Kim was #80.  There were no non-AQ Americans ranked higher than Juli but there were three ahead of Christina - #65 Vicky Hurst, #69 Kristy McPherson and #74 Katie Futcher.  So Inkster and Hurst would have been the two Rolex choices.  I feel certain that Christina would have been one of Captain Rosie's picks to go along with Ryann O'Toole - Jones passed on McPherson and Futcher in favor of O'Toole so why wouldn't she do the same in favor of the Solheim-proven Kim?  The resulting 12-member team would have been exactly the same even with the qualifying change.

How about the 2009 team?  Brittany Lincicome and Natalie Gulbis were the two final players automatically selected.  Brittany was Rolex #23 and Natalie was #48 - the only eligible player ahead of either who wasn't automatically selected was #24 Michelle Wie, who was taken as a Captain's pick.  So if the new rules were used then, Wie would have bumped Gulbis out.  Would Beth Daniel have then chosen Gulbis?  Looking at my player spreadsheets along with the numbers I posted two years ago, I believe Daniel would have chosen Natalie over Wendy Ward, Pat Hurst or Jane Park.  So once again - no difference in the team.  I couldn't locate the 2007 Solheim point standings but the Rolex Rankings of August 27, 2007 show that the twelve U.S. team members were the twelve highest ranked players from the United States, so there would almost certainly have been no difference that year either.

So why bother making this change?  The current format was simple enough for everybody to understand - finish in the Top 10 or hope you get picked by the captain.  Now you have to cross-reference two lists (not mention waiting an extra day for Rolex to release its rankings like Team Europe had to on Monday) or force people to count on TV commentators or bloggers to tell them who the automatic qualifiers are.  I'm guessing Rolex decided they should have some influence on the American team's composition if they were going to shell out the bucks to be a corporate sponsor.  If the U.S. Solheim Committee were going to make any change, I'd rather they abandon the current Solheim points system entirely and use the Rolex Rankings to determine all ten automatic spots.  Both methods measure the same thing anyway - performance over the last two years - and Rolex probably does a better job of it.  Keep it simple, stupid - especially if making it more complicated changes nothing.