Esther Henseleit booked the final automatic place on Anna Nordqvist's Solheim Cup team after a strong finish at the AIG Women's Open on Sunday.
The German golfer forced a play-off with a final-hole birdie at Royal Lytham & St Annes, then finished second after the second extra hole. That result moved her into the automatic qualification group and pushed Chiara Tamburlini out of the top eight.
The qualification system gives automatic places to the top two players in the European Solheim Cup points list and the next six in the Rolex Women's World Golf Rankings. With the campaign ending on Sunday, Henseleit grabbed the last spot available through that process.
Tamburlini missed the cut and missed out on an automatic Solheim Cup place by 0.9 points. Helen Briem also finished tied-sixth in the AIG Women's Open, but Henseleit was the player who did enough to seal her place on the team.
What it means for Anna Nordqvist
The Solheim Cup will be played at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands from September 11-13, and Nordqvist is scheduled to finalise her side with four captain's picks on Monday.
Nordqvist said that the best way to control selection was to play well enough to get in on merit, adding that players who performed well during the year were likely to be rewarded. That made Sunday an important closing chapter to the qualification race, with the automatic spots now settled before the captain's picks are announced.
For Henseleit, the result was enough to turn a near-miss into certainty. For Tamburlini, it was a narrow end to the campaign, with just 0.9 points separating her from an automatic place on Anna Nordqvist's Solheim Cup team.
