Suzann Talked To Phil, Regrets Having Taken Away From Solheim

Golf Channel's Tim Rosaforte sat down with Solheim Cup villain-du-jour Suzann Pettersen who is still trying to explain her behavior in Sunday morning's four-ball finish.

As you may recall, Pettersen was too far off the 17th green when Alison Lee picked up a supposed "gimme", costing the USA the hole. Pettersen has been rightfully demonized for calling Lee out from afar, or has she?

After all, had Seve done this when a clearly-ignorant American player presumably picked up their ball, wouldn't Europe be celebrating the shrewd gamesmanship and understanding of the rules? Yet Pettersen is taking a lot of heat for an incident she did not initiate.

I'm not saying it's a gender issue, but actually one that may be more tied to general ignorance of match play dynamics by too many. We touched on this element on Golf Central (here is the roundable I had with Rosaforte, Matt Adams and Rex Hoggard).

Anyway, in the interview, which didn't satisfy Karen Stupples in her Golf Central opportunity to react, Pettersen is maintaining her guarded apology and the more I believe the modern misunderstanding of match play dynamics by Lee isn't fully understood, the less I find Pettersen's behavior to be as awful as portrayed. And while I pointed this out before, I'll do it again: imagine how the modern game would react to a stymie situation if they demonize Suzann over this? As someone who would love to see the stymie come back, I perish the thought!

One of the more interesting reveals in the interview: Pettersen heard from Phil Mickelson:

 “One of the first players to reach out to me was Phil [Mickelson] on Sunday night. I don’t know how I can thank him enough for the words and hours on the phone – the good and bad…He asked me some critical questions, and I had to answer them.”

Oh to have been a fly on that call!