Rookie Hedwall handed Solheim Cup wild card

NEXT month’s Solheim Cup in Ireland will feature rookies on both teams after the inclusion of Ryann O’Toole for the Americans was followed yesterday by one of the European wild-cards being handed to Sweden’s Caroline Hedwall.

Home captain Alison Nicholas has added the 22-year-old to a side that already contained Scotland’s Catriona Matthew along with Azahara Muñoz from Spain, England’s Karen Stupples and Sandra Gal of Germany.

Hedwall enjoyed a glitterting amateur career before topping the LET’s Qualifying School last December. She then won the New South Wales Open on her professional debut the following month and has since earned two tournament victories in Europe.

She also upstaged major champions and Ryder Cup players by winning the inaugural PowerPlay Golf event in Wales earlier this year then, in the final few weeks of the qualifying campaign, finished 12th in the Evian Masters, 30th in the British Women’s Open at Carnoustie and 16th in the Irish Open.

“I couldn’t believe when I started this year that I would play in the Solheim Cup,” said Hedwall. “But I felt I showed Alison and the assistant captains (Joanne Morley and Annika Sorenstam) that I could compete against the European players.”

Muñoz, a 23-year-old who was the 2010 LPGA Rookie of the Year, and 26-year-old Gal, who beat Jiyai Shin, the current world No 2, to win the KIA Classic on this season’s LPGA Tour, will also be making their Solheim Cup debuts at Killeen Castle on September 23-25. Stupples, a former Women’s Open Champion, will be making her second appearance for Europe in the biennial event, the 38-yar-old having also been on the team at Crooked Stick in 2007.

“I am confident in my team and I believe that we will do very well at Killeen Castle,” said Nicholas, who played on the first European side to beat the Americans at Dalmahoy in 1992 and also captained the team in 2009 at Rich Harvest Farms. Matthew, the newly-crowned Scottish Ladies’ Open champion, had already secured her sixth appearance in the event from the world rankings along with Swedish trio Maria Hjorth, Anna Nordqvist and Sophie Gustafson.

Automatic selection had also been secured by England’s Melissa Reid and Laura Davies, Norway’s Suzann Pettersen and Christel Boeljon from the Netherlands from the LET points list. Reid and Boeljon take the number of European rookies in the event to five, though their inexperience is offset by the fact Davies will be making her 12th Solheim Cup appearance – the only player from either team to have played in every match since it started in 1990.

The US, who will be have Rosie Jones as their captain in Ireland, have won eight of the 11 editions, including each of the last three. Europe’s last win came at Baresback in Sweden in 2003.