Grimes finds the right combinations as U.S. takes 4-2 lead in Curtis Cup Matrch

   The United States will take a 4-2 lead into Day 2 of the Curtis Cup Match against Great Britain & Ireland after taking two full points in two of the three afternoon foursome matches at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. Friday.

   U.S. captain Virginia Derby Grimes, who played on three winning U.S. Curtis Cup sides, put her teams together in Friday’s two sessions wisely and well. She has some very talented players from which to choose, but all her teams made sense Friday. All eight of her players got out on the 6,235-yard, par-70 Quaker Ridge layout, an A.W. Tillinghast original that was tweaked a decade ago by one of the premier golf course architects of the modern day, Gil Hanse.

   The U.S. had a 2-1 lead after the morning four-ball matches, Great Britain & Ireland getting a couple of hard-won half-points.

   That set the stage for the afternoon foursome matches. The alternate-shot format has never been a strength of American teams in almost any international setting, but Grimes’ three pairs pulled out a couple of full points to double the U.S. advantage. The Stars & Stripes is trying to win the Curtis Cup back after GB&I, playing in front of a raucous crowd at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in suburban Dublin, claimed an 11.5-8.5 victory two years ago.

   But this year, in addition to playing at home, Grimes has the kind of firepower that GB&I possessed two years ago when U.S. college standouts Leona Maguire (Duke), Bronte Law (UCLA) and Charlotte Thomas (Washington) led a team that was a little too much to handle for a young U.S. side.

   Exhibit A was in the first match of Friday afternoon’s foursome session when Grimes paired UCLA star Lilia Vu, the No. 1 player in the latest Women's World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), and Wake Forest standout Jennifer Kupcho, the NCAA individual champion and No. 2 in the Women’s WAGR.

   GB&I captain Elaine Farquharson-Black countered with a couple of pretty strong players herself in the Atlantic Coast Conference pair of Clemson’s Alice Hewson and North Carolina State’s India Clyburn.

   And Hewson and Clyburn gave Vu of Fountain Valley, Calif. and Kupcho of Westminster, Colo. all they wanted. It looked like Hewson and Clyburn were going to square the match when Clyburn chipped in for birdie at the 13^th, but Vu calmly rolled her team’s 12-foot birdie putt right in on top of Clyburn to maintain her and Kupcho’s 1-up lead.

   They went on to pull out a full point with a 2-up victory.

   Grimes called on teammates from Alabama’s NCAA runnerup team, Kristen Gillman and Lauren Stephenson, for the U.S. match against GB&I’s Paula Grant, the veteran of the team at age 24, and talented 16-year-old Lily May Humphreys.

   When Grant and Humphreys ripped off wins on six, seven and eight to turn a 2-down deficit into a 1-up advantage, Gillman, who won the 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur at age 16, and Stephenson shrugged and got to work.

   Gillman of Austin, Texas and Stephenson of Lexington, S.C. won five of the next eight holes to claim a 4 and 2 victory. The concept of the foursome match, so elusive to so many American golfers, made perfect sense to the Alabama teammates. Roll Tide, right?

   “We know each other’s game really well and have similar games,” Stephenson told the USGA website. “We hit a lot of fairways, a lot of greens and give ourselves a lot of chances. That makes us a very successful team in alternate shot. We only had one bogey and it was three-putt (on No. 7).”

   Even the U.S. team that fell Friday afternoon was an inspired pairing by Grimes as she teamed the two returnees from the loss at Dun Laoghaire, Stanford’s Andrea Lee, No. 5 in the Women’s WAGR, and Vu’s UCLA teammate Mariel Galdiano.

   They probably put a lot of pressure on themselves and fell behind early in a 3 and 2 loss to GB&I’s best player, Olivia Mehaffey, also a veteran from Dun Laoghaire and No. 16 in the Women’s WAGR, and Sophie Lamb, the low amateur in last summer’s Richoh Women’s British Open.

   I guarantee you that Lee of Hermosa Beach, Calif. and Galdiano of Pearl City, Hawaii are playing huge leadership roles on this team.

   Mehaffey is also a veteran of the 2017 Arizona State team that won the NCAA Championship. She was  really tough last fall at the beginning of her sophomore season, but seemed to struggle at times this spring. But she’s got a Curtis Cup win and an NCAA Championship win. That’s what winners do. They win.

   Mehaffey authored one of the shots of the day near the end of the morning four-ball session. Teamed with Lamb in the better-ball format, Mehaffey and her partner found themselves 3-down to Kupcho and 15-year-old Lucy Li.

   Maybe you would argue that Li, at 15, shouldn’t be out there in the opening round of a pressure-packed event like the Curtis Cup. But the kid is immune to pressure. She was so intimidated by Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn design in Springfield, Delaware County where the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur was staged, the then-13-year-old fired rounds of 67 and 68 and nearly won medalist honors. Oh yeah, and she’s No. 9 in the Women’s WAGR.

   Mehaffey singlehandedly got GB&I back in the match, sinking an eight-footer for birdie at the 13^th and then a six-footer for birdie at the 15^th. Then, faced with 160 yards out of the rough to a tough front pin at the 17^th, Mehaffey knocked in to two feet for a kick-in birdie.

   Li had a tough downhill six-footer for birdie that she slid past the hole. The match went to the 18^th all square and Mehaffey and Lamb pulled out a half-point.

   Grimes put the hammer down in the morning with the pairing of Gillman, No. 8 in the Women’s WAGR, and Vu. They rolled to a 4 and 3 victory over Hewson and Humphreys for the one full point the Americans put on the board in the morning.

   Gillman and Vu combined for eight birdies with nary a bogey. And Gillman, who did not lose a match in three rounds of NCAA match play last month at Karsten Creek Golf Club, rolled in a 15-foot downhill slider for birdie to close out the match.

   Stephenson, No. 6 in the Women’s WAGR, was paired in the morning with Sophia Schubert, the reigning U.S. Women’s Amateur champion who just wrapped up an outstanding collegiate career at Texas.

   Stephenson and Schubert battled back from 2-down after 11 holes against Grant and Shannon McWilliam, an 18-year-old from Scotland, to take a 1-up lead to the 18^th tee after Schubert, showing the kind of match-play chops she displayed last summer in winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club, drained a tough 20-foot birdie putt on the 17^th green.

   But Grant answered with a pretty tough putt of her own, a 15-footer at the last that gave GB&I another half-point.

   The U.S. can send some heavyweights out there, but GB&I made it quite clear in the morning four-balls that it wasn’t backing down.

   There are two more rounds, another four-ball session followed by another foursome session Saturday, before the event wraps up Sunday with singles matches. The U.S. needs 10.5 points to claim the Curtis Cup. It is off to a good start.

   It’s hard to gauge from TV, but I thought the fan support for the U.S. side bordered on lukewarm. Lee and Galdiano can probably still hear the Irish golf fans’ full-throated support for GB&I at Dun Laoghaire. And, as expected, the group of GB&I fans who made the trip across the pond was making itself heard Friday.

   Hopefully, the New York City golf community can get out and whoop it up for our girls Saturday. You’ll  be watching a lot of these young ladies on the LPGA Tour in a few years. If it’s good golf you want to see, there will be plenty of that on display at Quaker Ridge the next two days.