After one day of the 43rd Curtis Cup, the ledger remains even.
Thanks to a chip-in birdie by Ireland’s Sara Byrne, the home GB&I side was able to nab a second four-ball point to tie the score 3-3 after Friday’s first two sessions at Sunningdale Golf Club in England.
“Honestly, it’s a dream finish that anyone could ask for,” Byrne said. “But I was waiting for something to drop and it finally did at the right time, thankfully.”
The U.S. took the opening foursomes session, 2-1, on the backs of Rachel Kuehn and Melanie Green steamrolling English sisters Mimi and Patience Rhodes, 6 and 4. The other two matches were tied.
“I think we got out of the gates running in the morning, made a birdie on the first and we never really took our foot off the gas,” Kuehn said.
In the afternoon, 15-year-old Asterisk Talley and incoming USC freshman Jasmine Koo combined for nine birdies in 14 holes to easily dispatch Mimi Rhodes and Lorna McClymont, 5 and 4. But that would be the Americans’ only four-ball win, as Scotland’s Hannah Darling and Ireland’s Aine Donegan, two college veterans at South Carolina and LSU, respectively, edged former Auburn teammates Anna Davis and Megan Schofill as Donegan holed a winning 20-footer for a 1-up victory.
That set the stage for Byrne, playing alongside the world’s top-ranked amateur, England’s Lottie Woad. Despite making eight birdies, the GB&I duo got all they could handle from UCLA’s Zoe Campos and USC’s Catherine Park. But Byrne holed a 35-footer to win No. 16 and then closed out the match with her 15-yard holed chip at the next.
“I kind of went a bit crazy,” Byrne said, “and it was so nice having the whole team right behind us there cheering us all on. I think we had everyone, all my friends and my family. I think every spectator was there with our whole team, which was really, really special. It’s a memory I’ll never forget.
“I think this is just giving us momentum to put the foot down. It’s still only day one and we still have two days left to go. It’s nice to have a little bit of momentum behind us but we have a big job to do still.”
