Europe locked up the Solheim Cup on Sunday with a 15-13 victory over Team USA at Bernardus Golf, and American captain Angela Stanford is still trying to figure out what went wrong. Straight up, she’s pointing fingers at her team’s putting game as the difference-maker, and you can practically hear the frustration in her voice.
The Putting Problem That Haunts Team USA
Team USA’s captain, Angela Stanford, isn’t sugarcoating it. After Europe’s tight 15-13 win, she laid it all out: the putting just wasn’t there. “I think we just didn’t make enough putts,” Stanford flat out said. She even admitted the Europeans just “always putt better. I don’t know why.” Honestly, that’s got to sting for any competitor. You gotta wonder why that consistent edge is there for them, right? It clearly fueled Europe’s victory after three intense days of play. When it comes down to those clutch moments, rolling the ball into the cup is everything, and the Americans just couldn’t find that rhythm often enough.
Kupcho’s Clutch, But The Greens Were A Mystery
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, though, especially not from Jennifer Kupcho! Late Saturday, she dropped two absolute bombs, totaling an incredible 120 feet of pure clutch, on Nos. 17 and 18. That snatched an unlikely point from Europe and tied the whole thing up at 8-8 after four sessions. The team even popped some Dutch beer on the bus to celebrate that incredible moment. Talk about a high! But despite that energy boost, Stanford felt her squad just couldn’t get a handle on the actual playing surface at Bernardus Golf. She said the greens were slower than normal, even slower than they were back in July, and the recent rain wasn’t even the culprit. “We don’t play on greens as slow usually,” Stanford explained, shouldering the blame herself. “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 … to change the way you putt.” That’s a brutal self-assessment, and you can feel the weight of it.
Losing The Fan Battle And Looking To Kentucky
And hey, it wasn’t just the greens. Assistant Paula Creamer chimed in, noting the European fans basically drowned out the American support. “Our Americans were there, but they weren’t as rambunctious as … we’re used to,” Creamer said. She nailed it when she added, “We are very momentum people and with our fans it’s important that we can feed off and get that energy from them.” You need that kind of roaring home crowd energy to lift a team, and it sounds like Team USA was playing in enemy territory the whole time. The good news? Team USA gets another crack at it in two years at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Stanford’s already looking forward to that home-field advantage: “The good news is they can show back up in Kentucky in a couple of years and make it right.” The big question now is whether Stanford will be leading the charge. She wasn’t ready to commit, hinting at a “pretty good pipeline” of future captains ready to step up. Whoever takes the reins, they’ve got some work to do, especially on those greens.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
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