Losing Solheim Cup captains know the question is coming, and come it did for U.S. captain Angela Stanford soon after her team’s 13-15 loss to Europe in the Netherlands on Sunday.
Is there anything you would have done differently?
The query, posed by a reporter to Stanford in the U.S. captains’ Sunday-evening press conference, was asked within the context of the Americans coming out flat and losing six of the first eight singles matches.
Stanford said she wouldn’t have changed anything, that she’d sent some of her big guns off later in the day because they needed to rest. The bigger issue, Stanford said, was her team’s inability to hole putts.
“If you listen to everything I’ve ever said, Europeans always putt better,” she said. “I don’t know why. I still don’t know why. I mean, I have a good idea, but I’m not going to say it right now.”
Here, Stanford laughed, before adding, “Apparently I didn’t get to know the superintendent as well as I should have”
Two questions later, Stanford was asked whether the slow green speeds at Bernadus Golf had caught her team off guard.
“Yeah, for sure,” the captain said. “Even when we showed up in July here, they were faster. And I don’t think it had anything to do with the rain, either. Now, saying that, it’s my responsibility to get the team ready. This is the one thing I am kicking myself is that I just didn’t keep pushing, you know, we got to figure out how to hit our putts a little bit harder, which is really difficult, like, to change the way you putt.”
Stanford continued: “So I’m a little frustrated with myself that I didn’t drive that point home. But there’s nothing we could do about that and the team knew that. I mean, nobody complained about it at all. It’s me saying this right now that I wish I would have maybe hammered it home more. Like, they’re going to be slow, they’re going to be slow, they’re going to be slow. But we don’t play on greens this slow usually, so, yeah.”
If Stanford’s remarks sound familiar, that might be because they echoed those of U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Brandley and one of his vice-captains, Jim Furyk, following their side’s loss (also 13-15!) to Europe at a soggy Bethpage Black last fall. Bradley had requested the greens roll at 12.5 on the Stimpmeter — which, in theory, would benefit the Americans who are accustomed to putting on faster greens — but for whatever reason (the weather was certainly a factor) the surfaces, according to the Americans, never rolled that quickly.
“Our players one by one didn’t think they reached that,” Furyk said. “Guys had a hard time getting putts to the hole and it did appear to be a little gluey. I think the request was always there to set the golf course up with less rough, but I think also believing that the greens would be firmer. I know we got some rain mid week but they were really, really soft when we arrived. So that probably is an issue a little bit. It’s not how we were looking at the golf course.”
And now, here we are roughly a year later, with green speed again emerging as a talking point in the wake of a U.S. team loss. So…did the Europeans, in an act of gamesmanship, defang the greens in advance of the event? The question was posed to European captain Anna Nordqvist on Sunday evening.
“Who said that?” Nordqvist said.
“Angela did,” a reporter replied.
Nordqvist acknowledged that the greens were “a little bit softer than we all thought coming here” but that was simply on account of a rainy September in the region and not because of any covert mowing instructions she’d provided the maintenance team. “That’s obviously the weather, we can’t control that,” she said.
Nordqvist added: “I always said going into this week we would try to showcase women’s golf. I’m not sure I believe a lot in setting up a way to fit Europe because these girls play the same golf courses week-in and week-out competing.”
The European captain said generally she thought the course setup looked and played beautifully — ”even though I didn’t hit a single shot. But I didn’t have to because I had 12 amazing players.”
The next edition of the Solheim Cup returns to the U.S., at Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky, in 2028. Rest assured, Valhalla’s mowers will be at the ready.
