The Solheim Cup unfolds in 2024 from Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia, as the United States team looks to win back the cup from the European team in the biennial competition -- which is played in back-to-back years to get the matches on years opposite the Ryder Cup.
The Europeans are looking to maintain control of the Solheim Cup for an unprecedented fourth-consecutive set of matches and keep the cup in their hands until the 2026 matches in The Netherlands.
However, the reason the Europeans still have the cup in their possession is that the last Solheim Cup, played in 2023 at Finca Cortesin in Spain, is because that competition ended in a tie.
In the Solheim Cup (and Ryder Cup, for that matter), there are 28 matches played over three days and five sessions of competition in various formats. Each match can end one of three ways: the United States wins, the Europeans win or the 18-hole match ends tied. In the event of the first two outcomes, the winning team earns a full point. In the event of a tie, both teams are a half-point, and there is no playoff to determine a match winner.
If the 28 matches end in a 14-14 tie, like they did in 2023, then there is no tiebreaker to decide the Solheim Cup winner. Rather, the tiebreaker is decided before the matches ever start. Whichever team comes into the competition as the cup holder has the tiebreaker in the event of a 14-14 draw. The Europeans won the 2021 matches at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, and therefore had the tiebreaker in 2023. They retained the cup.
Now, if there's an unprecedented second-consecutive tie, the Europeans would retain the Solheim Cup -- even though they retained the last cup via a tiebreaker advantage.
In other words, if the Americans want to take back control of the Solheim Cup, they have to do it by winning more points than the Europeans at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
