Solheim Cup Critics Couldn’t Be More Wrong 

AUCHTERARDER, SCOTLAND | The proposal was both simple and simply audacious: To create a team event in women’s pro golf that rivaled the resurgent Ryder Cup in the men’s game. The LPGA and Ladies European Tour took that vision and, with the backing of the Solheim family, turned the dream into a reality and called it the Solheim Cup.

Now, nearly three decades after it was first contested, this biennial event resonates with an excitement that this week ripples through the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland as for the 16th time the United States and Europe square off in what promises to be another intense competition.

Faces are painted and tens of thousands of fans are decked out in either red, white and blue or blue and gold. Songs are sung; chants are chanted and the atmosphere crackles with an electric excitement. There is an energy that you have to be here to appreciate.

This is an event that critics wanted to reinvent several times but the U.S. versus Europe format was saved twice in Scotland and once in Ireland, that last contest...