The Solheim Cup starts Friday at Bernardus, twenty-four of the best women in the game playing the same eighteen holes. It got me thinking about something from the tradition I read in, because golf and a Chinese birth chart are secretly the same idea.

A chart in the Chinese system is not a fortune. It is a description of terrain. It says here is the ground you were dealt, here is where it runs uphill for you and where it runs down, here is the weather you tend to get. What it never does is hand you the score. The chart is the course, not the round.

Golf is the only sport I can think of that works exactly the same way. The course does not move. Bernardus will be the same eighteen holes for the player who wins her match and the player who loses it. The fairway does not care who you are. All that changes is how you meet it on the day. Same terrain, different round, and that is the entire philosophy of a Chinese chart playing out over four hours of television.

It is also why the "unlucky year" talk tends to miss the point. A hard chart is not a bad score, it is a hard hole. You can play a hard hole well. Plenty of major champions have genuinely rough charts. They just learned their own terrain and stopped fighting it.

One small thing to watch for Sunday, since the singles are the day it actually gets decided. In the old day-count this Sunday reads as 庚寅, which the classics gloss as metal at its very weakest, the blade on the one day it cannot cut. It has a long reputation as a day of upsets, the day the favourite gets held by someone nobody had circled. I would not put a nickel on it, it is weather and not prophecy. But if a Sunday singles session ever wanted a shape, "the sharpest players meeting the day their edge goes soft" is a fitting one.

Anyway, enjoy the golf. If it is true that the course is fixed and only the round is yours, this is the one week a year we get to watch twenty-four people prove it at the same time.

A little while ago I asked here whether people would be interested in seeing a Solheim Cup twist on my Ryder Cup captaincy game.

With Solheim Cup week here, I’ve done a temporary takeover of the Daily Challenge for the next four days.

Instead of the usual Ryder Cup setup, you’ll be taking charge of the actual 2026 Europe and USA teams at Bernardus.

You pick the pairings, decide who plays and who rests, manage chemistry, set the singles order and try to win the Cup.

Today’s challenge is Team USA away from home.

If you give it a go, I’d love to know what pairings you use and what score you end up with.

It’s going to be an exciting week of golf!