The Solheim Cup turns calm, composed players into fierce rivals every two years. Team Europe and Team USA don’t just compete against each other; they clash. Most editions produce tense moments that fade by the next morning, but a handful go further, turning routine rulings into grudges that outlast the tournament itself. Here’s a recap of three moments, spanning almost a decade, where rivalry stopped being about golf and started being personal.

1994 Solheim Cup, The Greenbrier, West Virginia

American player Dottie Pepper was playing a four-ball match against Europe’s Laura Davies. On the third hole, Davies had a ten-foot putt to halve the hole, but she missed it. Instead of the usual respectful silence, Pepper let out a loud “yes!” pumping her fist repeatedly in front of Davies, who had already started walking towards the hole to collect her ball. She stopped in her tracks, looking at Dottie, stunned.

For context, celebrating an opponent’s miss directly, especially with that much visible fist-pumping, was considered a real breach of golf etiquette, at least back then. It stood in stark contrast to a sport built around quiet sportsmanship, even between rivals. It wasn’t seen as passion. It was seen as rubbing the win in. And the resentment hardened into a rivalry that didn’t fade quickly.

By the 1998 Solheim Cup, four years later, Pepper’s reputation still hadn’t faded: the Europeans reportedly joked about keeping a Pepper punching bag in their locker room, a running bit about how much it irritated them. Pepper, for her part, never fully backed down from it either. Asked directly about her sportsmanship afterward, she gave a blunt answer: she didn’t care.

2015: The Part Alison Lee Never Got to Finish

The second incident remains one of the biggest controversies in the Solheim Cup’s history. In 2015, at St. Leon-Rot, Germany, Suzann Pettersen found herself at the center of a big storm. Paired with 19-year-old Charley Hull against American rookie Alison Lee and Brittany Lincicome, the two sides were dead level with two holes left in their four-ball match.

The situation grew critical on the 17th hole. Lee’s birdie putt slid just past the hole, stopping roughly 18 inches away. Hull, on the other hand, started walking towards the 18th tee, believing the putt had been waved off. Lee scooped her ball up with her putter in an instant.

That’s when Pettersen turned to the referee, saying the putt had never been conceded. Since Lee had already lifted her ball, there was nothing left to argue. Officials awarded the hole to Europe, who went on to close the match.

The blow was brutal, as both Lee and Hull broke down into tears on the green, and television pundit Laura Davies didn’t mince words watching from the booth. She called the moment disgraceful. Even U.S. captain Juli Inkster was just as blunt afterward. “You just don’t do that to your peers. It’s disrespectful.”

Pettersen initially defended her decision, but the backlash only grew overnight. As the pressure kept mounting, by Monday morning she posted a long personal apology on Instagram, admitting she had never felt more gutted or sad about anything in her career. She detailed in her note that she let her team down by chasing a single point instead of thinking about sportsmanship. She revealed she sought out Inkster in person before leaving Germany to apologize face to face.

Still, it didn’t change the outcome. Team USA, fired up by controversy, stormed back from a 10-6 deficit to win the cup outright. The score was 14.5 to 13.5, turning Pettersen’s gamesmanship into the very spark that beat her.

2021: The Ball Picked Up a Few Seconds too Soon

The third and most recent incident came in 2021 at Inverness Club in Ohio. The flashpoint had shifted from concessions to a rule almost nobody could recite from memory. The players involved were Madelene Sagstrom and rookie partner Nanna Koerstz Madsen, who were tied with Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing on the par-5 13th.

The clash came when Korda’s eagle attempt slid past the cup, coming to rest right on the lip. Convinced it had no chance of dropping in, Sagstrom walked in, picked it up, and conceded the hole.

However, there was one big issue. Under Rule 13.3, once a player reaches a ball overhanging the lip of the cup, they have to wait a full ten seconds before touching it, to give it a fair chance to fall on its own. Sagstrom hadn’t waited that long. A rules official radioed in, and after review, Korda was awarded the eagle outright. The hole and the momentum swung to Team USA.

The fallout was immediate and ugly. Pro-American crowds began heckling the European pair mercilessly from that point forward.

“It was so tough,” Koerstz Madsen said of the jeers that followed them for the rest of the round. Sagstrom was visibly emotional afterwards. The two sides barely spoke for the rest of the match, they didn’t even trade the usual handshakes and pleasantries on the final green, and Europe went on to win the session anyway.

None of this started as anything big. Pepper celebrated a bit too hard. Pettersen called a putt that hadn’t been conceded. Sagstrom picked her ball up a few seconds early. But each time, the players involved carried it with them long after the match ended. Almost ten years apart, and it’s the same story every time: pride gets in the way, someone makes a call in the moment, and the grudge sticks around longer than the tournament does.