SUNNINGDALE, England — You thought the Curtis Cup was a three-day event? Think again. Now it’s only two. With 14 points still available, the 43rd encounter between Great Britain & Ireland and the United States is tied at 3-3 at the end of Day 1. It is an obviously intriguing situation, one that provided non-playing captains Catriona Matthew of GB&I and Meghan Stasi of the U.S. with much to ponder over when it came to choosing Saturday morning’s foursomes pairings and order.

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For Matthew, at least one decision was relatively straightforward. Unbeaten in their two matches together on Friday, re-pairing World No. 1 Lottie Woad and Ireland’s Sarah Byrne was a no-brainer. They will lead off the home team on Day 2, with Hannah Darling and Aine Donegan, on the back of their thrilling last-green victory in the top fourball on Day 1, in the second match.

More problematic was what to do with the Rhodes sisters, beaten 6 and 4 in their lone match together. And, as it turns out, they have been split. Mimi, on the back of two losses that both finished as early as the 14th green, is sitting. Sister Patience will partner Beth Coulter in the third match.

“It wasn’t just about tomorrow morning for me,” said Matthew. “The singles on Sunday was part of my thinking. I’ve seen in the Solheim Cup how players can get tired if they have to play all five matches. So that definitely came into it. We didn’t get the best start in the foursomes today, even if we did end up with a point and a half. So I’ve switched things up a little bit.”

Great Britain & Ireland players celebrate during the Friday fourball of the Curtis Cup.

Oisin Keniry/R&A

Top of that list is Woad moving from the anchor position to the top of the order. Aware that her top player is also the top target for the opposition, the GB&I skipper is keen to keep her “moving around to keep them guessing.”

“I know I said I have to be careful about any playing five times,” continued Matthew, herself a three-time Curtis Cup player back in the early 1990s. “But if anyone does, I have to think it will be Lottie. It would be a big call to leave her out. She is our top player. But I have good team around her too. The golf today was terrific and the big putts we holed at the end has given the team more self-belief. They now know they can do it when they have to do it. Coming in, I think they knew they were good enough to beat the Americans, but those putts have definitely given them a big surge in confidence.”

As for Stasi, the U.S. captain was also talking confidence in the wake of a day that ended even but could have gone either way. And that played into who plays with who and the order in which the Americans will play. Three members of the visiting team—Anna Davis, Megan Schofill and Catherine Park—have yet to win even half a point, and all three will play in the seeding series of foursomes Saturday morning.

“It was really all about the girls having confidence in each other,” said Stasi. “I think I could pair anyone with anyone and they would be fine with it. They all mesh really well. Melanie [Green] and Rachel [Kuehn] will go out first because they have played a lot together, foursomes and fourballs. The same is true of Anna and Megan in the second match. They are comfortable together, as are Zoe [Campos] and Cathy [Park]. So familiarity was the theme really. But I could have gone other ways. They all performed well today.”

Stasi did concede that she would have liked to know what Matthew was thinking before coming up with her own plan.

“The order would be different if I knew beforehand who they were playing against,” she said. “But it is luck of the draw. Again, I could have put my girls out in any order. The one thing I wouldn’t change is the first game. I want a strong start and Mel and Rachel are, I felt, best placed to give us that.

“I have to say my team make it easy for me when it comes to the decisions I have to make,” she concluded. “They are so mature on so many levels. So they are able to look at the big picture. I’ve always been up-front with them. The likelihood is that everyone will play four matches. That should tell you that I trust every one of them.”

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com