How Are The Sunday Singles Pairings Decided At The Solheim Cup?

Charley Hull and Nelly Korda at the Solheim Cup — How are the pairings decided for the Solheim Cup singles session?

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Solheim Cup comes to a head on Sunday with the last of its five sessions.

The pivotal day will see something a little different than the first two days. Instead of sessions of foursomes and four-ball, the focus will be singles.

Another difference from days one and two is player involvement, with all 24 guaranteed to play for the first time all week.

Like the foursomes and four-ball session, the Sunday singles follows a match play format.

One player takes on an opponent from the other team. Whichever player takes the fewest shots to hole the ball wins the hole to go 1-up. If both players hole the ball in the same number of shots, the hole is halved.

The player who is ahead when the match finishes earns a point for their team, while a match that is level after 18 holes earns each team half a point.

There are 12 matches in the Sunday singles session, meaning there are 12 points up for grabs. As a result, it is ultimately where the Solheim Cup will be won or lost (or even tied).

Team USA with the Solheim Cup — The Sunday singles is the deciding session

As the defending champions, the US need to get to 14 points to retain the trophy, while for Team Europe, 14.5 points are required to wrestle it back out of US hands.

With so much at stake on Sunday, getting the finer details right is key for captains Anna Nordqvist and Angela Stanford, one of which is choosing the best possible order of matches. But how are the pairings decided?

The captains don’t decide between them who will play whom. Rather, they select the order of their 12 players in a blind-draw format.

Angela Stanford and Anna Nordqvist — The captains select the order of the singles in a blind-draw format

In other words, the two lists are submitted without the captains knowing the other’s order.

They can take educated guesses as to which order the other will choose. For example, captains typically pick the strongest players first to give themselves the best chance of winning early points, but they are under no obligation to do so.

Once the two lists are submitted, they are matched, with the first player on Europe's list playing the first player on the US list, and so on through the 12th and final match-up.

Mike has over 25 years of experience in journalism, including writing on a range of sports throughout that time, such as golf, football and cricket. Now a freelance staff writer for Golf Monthly, he is dedicated to covering the game's most newsworthy stories.

He has written hundreds of articles on the game, from features offering insights into how members of the public can play some of the world's most revered courses, to breaking news stories affecting everything from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to developmental Tours and the amateur game.

Mike grew up in East Yorkshire and began his career in journalism in 1997. He then moved to London in 2003 as his career flourished, and nowadays resides in New Brunswick, Canada, where he and his wife raise their young family less than a mile from his local course.

Kevin Cook’s acclaimed 2007 biography, Tommy’s Honour, about golf’s founding father and son, remains one of his all-time favourite sports books.