Dottie Pepper remembers the last hole of the 1990 Centel Classic like it was yesterday. She was stymied behind a 150-yard bush and had to pitch out and get up and down from a little over 100 yards. The 25-year-old Pepper drained the 7-footer for par and felt like she’d won the event. Beth Daniel actually claimed the title, but that par allowed Pepper to edge Danielle Ammaccapane for the eighth and final spot on the inaugural Solheim Cup team.
It secured her place in history.
The 1990 Solheim Cup was held in November at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Florida, and put together in a few short months. While the first one was a sparsely attended, lopsided affair – with the Americans beating the Europeans 11 1/2 to 4 1/2 – it didn’t take long for the biennial event to explode.
The 16 players on those first teams combined to win 261 titles on the LPGA. Kathy Whitworth team’s consisted of five Hall of Famers, including Pat Bradley, Beth Daniel, Nancy Lopez, Betsy King and Patty Sheehan along with Rosie Jones, Cathy Gerring and Pepper.
Mickey Walker’s squad consisted of the four winningest players in LET history: Laura Davies, Dale Reid, Marie-Laure de Lorenzi and Trish Johnson, along with major champions Helen Alfredsson, Liselotte Neumann, Alison Nicholas and LPGA Rookie of the Year Pam Wright.
Here’s a collection of some of their memories from the star-studded event:
