Team ethic is likely to be a winner

Europe players have all bonded over a long time

Europe’s Solheim Cup advantage is the home soil of Gleneagles

And perhaps it is also the cool of a late summer Scottish morning as today’s foursomes get under way on the PGA Centenary Course.

The other factor might be the simple knowledge of the European team about each other, something that has worked to similar effect for Europe in these contests before.

All week Juli Inkster’s Americans have been at pains to mention how well they are all getting along as a group, almost as if this was a surprise to some of them.

We have heard this at Gleneagles before, of course, in 2014 when Phil Mickelson espoused how great the team spirit was in the Ryder Cup US team room.

Three days later, the US team were well beaten and Mickelson was infamously throwing captain Tom Watson “under a bus” as team unity was shown to be not quite as he had painted.

Nobody is going to do that to twiceSolheim winner Inkster, who has nothing to prove to anyone as a captain.

However she has been handed the youngest and least experienced American Solheim team in nearly 30 years of these matches.

And for all her outward faith in their abilities, this format and an alien venue means this is her toughest assignment by far.

Europe’s team are not only more experienced, they are also better bonded. Georgia Hall pointed out that she, Charley Hull and Bronte Law had known each other since they were 10 and had played junior golf together all the way to the LPGA and to Team Europe.

Captain Catriona Matthew has been the elder stateswoman of European golf for nigh-on a decade and a half and she has close ties with players like Suzann Pettersen, Anna Nordqvist and Hull, who at 23 is playing her fourth edition already.

Inkster’s most experienced – and highest ranked – player is Lexi Thompson, but she has been parted from her minder and partner for all her previous three appearances, the gritty and often grumpy Cristie Kerr.

Brittany Altomare, the rookie taking Kerr’s slot, is a similar player to the USA’s record point winner in the event, says Inkster – and no doubt that is true.

However, she cannot possibly bring what Kerr, even out of form, could have brought to the US team.

And there was a curious example of the differing way the US team works to Europe from Inkster when she talked about their pairing .

“They played together in Canada (presumably the CP Open in August) and afterwards Lexi said ‘she can really play’, which made me think they could play together,” said the US captain.

Really? Altomare has been on the LPGA tour for three years and that was the first time Lexi had noticed her?

Even allowing for the blinkered focus of top players outside these team events and the bonding exercises over pingpong and fusball in the team room, it seems there’s a deficit to make up.

The US team did gel in Germany in Inkster’s debut as captain, but really only after they were sparked by the incident in which Suzann Pettersen’s sportsmanship was called into question. And that team had plenty of Solheim experience behind it.

“All week Juli Inkster’s Americans have been at pains to mention how well they are all getting along as a group