Team International leads Team USA 6.5 to 5.5 after the first day of the Arnold Palmer Cup at Golf Club de Genéve in Vandœuvres, Switzerland.
Team USA began solid, winning the initial two matches before Team International got out ahead with three dominant triumphs. The matching of Julia Lopez Ramirez and Mateo Fernández de Oliveira split the 18th hole to get a 1-up triumph.
“We tied a lot of holes with birdies, but we stayed patient and believed in each other,” Lopez Ramirez said.
“We only wanted one thing, and that’s to bring the points home. Luckily we did that here on 18,” said Fernández de Oliveira, the first Argentinian to participate in the Palmer Cup.
Team International’s Archie Davies and Amelia Williamson split the initial two holes of Match 10 with Americans Nick Gabrelcik and Rachel Heck prior to birdieing 10 of the final 14 holes to win, 4 and 2.
Match 12 was apparently the most expected of the day with Team USA’s Michael Thorbjornsen and Rose Zhang confronting Team International’s Christo Lamprecht and Heather Lin, and it lived up to to the hype, coming down to the wire.
The teams divided the initial three holes before the United States pair started to lead the pack through the fourteenth. Then the International pair birdied the fifteenth to tie it and birdied the sixteenth to take the 1-up lead. The two groups parred the last two holes to complete the day.
