Angela Stanford, who will captain the 2026 US Solheim Cup side at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands, shares many of the same qualities as Anna Nordqvist, the European captain. In fact, the same could be said of her as was said of Nordqvist in these pages when her role was confirmed last month: “Give her a player who is a tad too exuberant and she will know how to calm her down; give her a girl who has worries on her mind and she will know how to listen.”
Stanford has won one major, the 2018 Evian Championship, to Nordqvist’s three, but what a major it was. It happened at the 77th time of asking and when she was heading for her 41st birthday. That success story besides, she bagged the 2012 HSBC Women’s World Championship, the event which has come to be known as Asia’s major, among her total of seven LPGA victories.
Amid their on course successes, both captains-to-be have known tough times in life itself. Stanford when her much-loved mother, Nan, passed away from cancer three years ago, and Nordqvist when her husband, from whom she was separated, died suddenly two years ago at the age of 39.
Fine golfer though she would become, Stanford did not have the easiest of times in amateur days. Where plenty of her sister LPGA players would have come from families who could afford to ferry their offspring from one amateur event to another, she spent her time at Texas Christian University doing a part-time job in addition to studying and playing college golf. Angie Ravaioli-Larkin, her college coach, had this to say of her: “Angela was never handed everything on the proverbial plate. She’s had to work for what she’s got and that’s how it should be in the real world. It’s made her humble and she’s stayed humble.”
In addition to being caring and kindly, Stanford and Nordqvist have all the guts in the world. And, when it comes to the ’26 Solheim, you can guarantee that neither will shy away from explaining to a player why they are about to leave her out of a particular series.
That, as everyone knows, is something which went wrong in ’24 when Suzann Pettersen, then Europe’s captain, left Ireland’s Leona Maguire in the dark when she omitted her from each of the Saturday matches.
Along much the same lines, there is unlikely to be a repeat of what happened in 2015.
To recap, that was the year when Pettersen, who was playing alongside Charley Hull in the Saturday four-balls, had failed to warn Alison Lee, from the ranks of the Americans, that she should not be giving herself the odd 6-inch putt. And when, at the 17th, it happened one more time, Pettersen claimed the hole and the match was in chaos thereafter.
The rest of the Europeans were embarrassed their teammate would have won that point in such a way, while Juli Inkster, the U.S. captain, capitalised on the situation by making her players feel they had been the victims of some terrible injustice. (The Americans came back from a 10-6 deficit on Saturday to win by 14½-13½.)
The captains of ’26 were both there, with Stanford defeating Pettersen by 2 and 1 to win the all-important point in the Sunday singles. Pettersen has mellowed since that week, while she turned into something of a hero as she collected the winning point of 2019 at Gleneagles.
That Stanford did a bit of mellowing herself many years ago was something to which she admitted in 2019 when there had been a handful of “golfers-behaving-badly” episodes among the men. Sergio García, for one, had used a club to ruffle up five greens in the European Tour’s Saudi International. And Justin Rose, for another, broke a couple of his wedges in half.
With regard to Rose’s mistakes, Stanford’s comment could not have been more apposite: “The women’s prize money may have gone up but not too many of them can afford the luxury of breaking things. Men break a club and are given another. If one of our players breaks a club, she will most likely have to pay for it herself.”
Stanford, who has been a vice captain on three occasions, most recently to Stacy Lewis in ’23 and ’24, confessed to having broken a driver on one occasion and to feeling badly about it ever since. “I’d broken it because I’d been a baby, and there I was asking for another.” She also owned to having yelled at the odd caddie: “I’d never do that again, mostly because I realised that golfers look ridiculous when they behave badly.”
If in a different way, Stanford felt stressed when, after winning a tournament in her third year on tour, she had to wait five years before winning another. Once again, she was able to sort herself out, deciding she had to stop seeing herself as a one-win wonder. No sooner had she digested that idea than she came out on top three times in the space of the next six months.
With regard to the time it took for her to pin down her Evian triumph, her every previous top-five finish in major championships – and there were seven of those – used to leave her wondering if she could ever get that close again. Indeed, even when she was on the point of that French win, she was busy entertaining negative thoughts of how she would cope if it was a case of “here I go again.”
Stanford also had in store the belief that God has a plan for everyone and that she would be perfectly prepared to retire from playing on the LPGA Tour – something she did last year – without being a major champion. But in looking back a year later, she was not sure she would have been perfectly prepared. She was cross with herself for not having won earlier, albeit pleased for the relief she had accorded her family.
“I can’t tell you how many texts I’d had from them over the years,” she chuckled. “One night it would be ‘Go get it!’ The next, ‘Good luck’ and after that it would be, “Well maybe next time’…”
Stanford and Nordqvist will no doubt get the first two of those messages in equal measure when the ’26 Solheim Cup gets underway. But as to which of them is likely to be on the receiving end of the “Well maybe next time” comment, my guess is that it’s going to be a toss up.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Angela Stanford has been a vice captain for the U.S. Solheim Cup team three times.
Stuart Franklin, Getty Images