It’s important to understand the playing field, and to then reveal the characters and the story line that featured on day one of the 2022 Curtis Cup. The movement of Merion is a two-segment revelation. The first part is the topography, and the second part is the rigor of the layout. Merion moves up and down, with a fair amount of sideways, from the second tee on. The first hole, as happens at many great courses, does nothing more than mask what is to come. As for the second portion of the explanation, you make your birdies in the first ten holes of the course. You might steal one or two from 11 through 13, but you’re just as likely to make a mistake, and make bogey or worse…and kick yourself. Two shortish fours and a wee three, and none is easy.

After crossing the entry way, you face the final five holes, perhaps the toughest stretch in championship golf. If your strategy is to play safe and hit fairway and green, you might face an approach from the wrong side, and a seventy-feet putt. Massive greens, demanding long approaches, and twisting fairways that repel your ball toward the rough. Did I mention that it’s thick, and that there is no intermediate cut to slow your roll?

Everything mentioned in that extended cut of the opening paragraph is critical to understanding why the score is 5-1 after one day of competition. The intelligent, strategic golfer resists temptation, and lets the match-play opponent make the mistake. As can be expected, the team with five points did a better job than the team with one.

Morning Matches

The first morning match ascends to the 10th tee deck.

Team USA, led off by the Rachels (Kuehn and Heck), jumped out to a two-match lead at Merion, but feisty GBI grabbed the final match of the antemeridian hours to close to a one-two deficit. Team GBI traditionally opens with foursomes (aka alternate shot) when it hosts the match, so to be just one point down on the road is nearly a win.

Rachel Heck of Team USA crosses the stone bridge that fronts the 9th green.

Team USA is supremely comfortable with the four ball format (aka better ball) and showed with birdies at hole one, in the first two matches. In the first match, after the hosts took early advantage, GBI’s Annabell Fuller and Hannah Darling came back with birdie wins at holes six and eight to take the lead away. That lead would last for three holes, when the Rachels would notch a second birdie. The pair from Stanford and Wake Forest would drop yet another win at the wee 13th, a tiny par three tucked between the clubhouse and Ardmore Road. The grueling closing stretch at Merion yielded no birdies over the final five holes, and Team USA held on for a one-up win.

Lauren Walsh of Great Britain and Ireland tees off at the short 10th in the AM matches.

In match two, Amari Avery and Megha Ganne of the Red, White & Blue hung birdie shingles on holes one and three to jump out early. Lauren Walsh and Caley McGinty halved the lead to one with birdie at the sixth, but AAMG added a third birdie at the eighth to regain the two-up advantage. Unlike match one, the closing stretch was all about the birdies. The hosts expanded their lead to four-up with wins a t13 and 14. GBI grabbed one back at the 15th with a fine birdie, but halving pars at the quarry 16th ended the match, in favor of Team USA.

Rose Zhang of Team USA, approaches the 16th green at Merion in the morning round.

Match three played out a bit differently from the first two. The teams did not strike until the fourth hole, when the hosts made birdie at the long par five. They gave the advantage back on the next hole, when neither Zhang nor Migliaccio could manage a par. The back-nine par three holes would prove to be friends to the visitors, as the match remained even until the 13th. GBI made a deuce to retake the lead, and then added another birdie two at the barbaric 17th, a quarry hole unlike any other in the game. With a win at that hole, the pair of Duncan and Heath secured a critical point for the Blue side.

Afternoon Matches

Rachel Kuehn of Team USA waits patiently and comfortably in the 12th fairway.

We are all believers in the comeback, but when a team posts three double bogies in the first five holes (and loses all three holes) there’s a limit to how much you can believe in comebacks. For whatever reason, the Hannah Darling-Louise Duncan partnership was over before it began. Entrusted with beginning the afternoon charge, the pair failed to win a hole of the 15 that were played. The USA side of Latanna Stone and  Jensen Castle was fresh after sitting out the morning matches. They simply bided their time, made one birdie, avoided big numbers, and won by 5 and 3.

Latanna Stone of Team USA pitches to the 10th green.

The second match was defined by the notion of take and give. The GBI pair of Caley McGinty and Emily Price won three holes against the six captured by their USA counterparts, Amari Avery and Rachel Kuehn. The Take and Give comes into play when you examine what GBI did on each subsequent hole to their wins. After winning the seventh, they made bogey at eight to halve. Par would have won. Subsequent to capturing the 11th with birdie, they shortsided their approach into the 12th greenside bunker and lost the hole to a par. Finally, a par for a win at the 14th was followed by a bogey for a loss at the 15th. That final dagger ended the match, at 3 and 2 for the host duo. This is the highest level of competitive amateur golf, and mistakes made are always paid.

Caley McGinty recovers from the left greenside bunker at 12.

The odds were long for Team GBI in match number three, as Stanford University teammates Rachel Heck and Rose Zhang paired up against Charlotte Heath and Amelia Williamson. Of course did Heath and Williamson jump out to a two-up lead after three holes. That’s how logic works. After the round, Rose Zhang revealed that she and Heck sang Let’s Get Down To Business from Mulan in the 16th fairway, but they might as well have been humming it from the fifth tee to the 10th green. The pair won four of those five holes and halved the other. In so doing, they turned a two-hole deficit into an equal advantage. The match ended at the sixteenth green, where the Red, White, and Blue won its seventh hole of the match, to close out the visitors by 4 and 2.

Rachel Heck of Team USA wonders at her tee ball on the tricky 11th.