After losing the Cup to Europe 15-13, Stanford expressed that the greens were unexpectedly slow—at least compared to what she expected.
“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,” Stanford said. “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, to change the way you putt.”
She said her team wasn’t complaining. Jennifer Kupcho made a 91-foot putt on 17 and a 26-foot putt on 18 on Saturday to pull the competition all square heading into Sunday singles. But Stanford said she blamed herself for not being in her players’ ears more, reminding them that the greens were slower than they were used to and that they needed to get the ball to the hole. Though clearly feeling less than thrilled about the greens and disappointed her team isn’t taking the Cup home, Stanford leaves the Netherlands knowing that the overarching goal of the event was achieved.
“Anna [Nordqvist, Europe’s captain] and I agree, if we got to the end of the week and women's golf grew just a little bit more, then we did our jobs,” Stanford said.