Angela Stanford named US captain of Solheim Cup for the 2026 matches in the Netherlands

Sport

Angela Stanford named US captain of Solheim Cup for the 2026 matches in the Netherlands

2025-03-20 22:53 Last Updated At：23:02

Angela Stanford was introduced Thursday as the next U.S. captain of the Solheim Cup, leading a young core of Americans who are coming off a victory and will try to win the cup overseas for the first time in more than a decade.

Stanford was on the last American team that won away from home, in 2015 in Germany when Juli Inkster was at the helm. She was an assistant on the last three teams, including what she calls a “massive” victory in Virginia last September.

The U.S. team was so young that 10 of the 12 players had never experienced what it was like to win the Solheim Cup.

“They needed that feeling,” Stanford said. “Virginia was big for a lot of these players, and I hope getting a taste of that win and getting a taste of what it meant ... you can't feel something you've never felt before. That was kind of cool. Hopefully, they'll want to accept the next challenge, which is winning one overseas.”

The 2026 matches will be held at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands. Anna Nordqvist of Sweden had been selected captain for Europe.

Stanford, 47, has seven LPGA Tour victories, including her lone major in the 2018 Evian Championship when she was 40. She also played in 98 consecutive majors, the longest streak in LPGA history.

She played six times in the Solheim Cup, with three wins and three losses, and was at the last three as an assistant to Pat Hurst (2021 ) and Stacy Lewis (2023 and 2024).

Lewis was captain for consecutive years because the Ryder Cup went back to odd-numbered years after the COVID-19 pandemic and the Solheim Cup went back to even-numbered years. Lewis effectively signed up for two years, and delivered a big win in Virginia.

It was Stanford's second stint as an assistant — the tie in Spain, with Europe retaining the cup as defending champion — that she first thought how much she would like to be captain.

“I've always wanted to be a captain overseas,” Stanford said. “I won my Curtis Cup overseas. I got to play on two of the teams that have won the Solheim Cup overseas. Growing up, I played a lot of different team sports and I loved going to other people's gyms, going to their fields.

“It doesn't bother me to go into a hostile environment and try to play and try to perform.”

The core of the American team is Nelly Korda and Lilia Vu, with multiple major championships between them. Nine of the U.S. players were in their 20s at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, which held off a late European charge.

Stanford expects there to be some turnover, as there was even a year apart between the 2023 and 2024 matches. But she likes the core of the U.S. team, especially a team she watched celebrate into the night after winning the last time.

“I think I'm pretty fortunate and pretty blessed to be in this line of a solid core,” Stanford said. “They're still young. They're all going to be playing really well.”

Among the two players who had previously won a Solheim Cup is Lexi Thompson, who said 2024 would be her final year of a full schedule. Thompson still plans to play occasionally, and Stanford would not rule out Thompson being on the 2026 team if her play warranted it.

“She's earned that right to do what she wants to do," Stanford said. "I will be watching, for sure. Lexi is just one of those names you always pay attention to, and there's always an open door. There's certain players that have earned that right.”

(This version corrects the photo links to replace one that misidentified Stanford)

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Heathrow reopens and chaos eases. But critics say the airport's shutdown exposes UK vulnerability

2025-03-22 20:54 Last Updated At：21:01

LONDON (AP) — London Heathrow Airport said it was “fully operational” on Saturday, after an almost daylong closure sparked by an electrical substation fire. But thousands of passengers remained stuck, and airlines warned that severe disruption will last for days as they scramble to relocate planes and crews and get travelers to their destinations.

Friday's travel mayhem raised concerns about Britain's ability to withstand disasters or attacks on critical infrastructure. Inconvenienced passengers, angry airlines and concerned politicians all want answers about how one seemingly accidental fire could shut down Europe’s busiest air hub.

“This is a huge embarrassment for Heathrow airport. It’s a huge embarrassment for the country that a fire in one electricity substation can have such a devastating effect," said Toby Harris, a Labour Party politician who heads the National Preparedness Commission, a group that campaigns to improve resilience.

Heathrow said it had “hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers." It advised passengers to check with their airline before going to the airport.

British Airways, Heathrow’s biggest airline, said it expected to operate about 85% of its 600 scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday. It said that "to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.”

While many passengers managed to resume stalled journeys, others remained in limbo.

Laura Fritschie from Kansas City was on vacation with her family in Ireland when she learned that her father had died. On Saturday she was stranded at Heathrow after her BA flight to Chicago was canceled at the last minute.

“I’m very frustrated," she said. “This was my first big vacation with my kids since my husband died, and ... now this. So I just want to go home.”

More than 1,300 flights were canceled and some 200,000 people stranded Friday after an overnight fire at a substation 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away from the airport cut power to Heathrow, and to more than 60,000 properties.

Residents in west London described hearing a large explosion and then seeing a fireball and clouds of smoke when the blaze ripped through the substation. The fire was brought under control after seven hours, but the airport was shut for almost 18. A handful of flights took off and landed late Friday.

Police said they do not consider the fire suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation.

Still, the huge impact of the fire left authorities facing questions about Britain’s creaking infrastructure. The government acknowledged that authorities had questions to answer and said a rigorous investigation was needed to make sure “this scale of disruption does not happen again.”

Harris, from the preparedness commission. said the airport shutdown points to a broader problem with Britain’s economy and infrastructure.

“The last 40, 50 years we’ve tried to make services more efficient,” he said. “We’ve stripped out redundancy, we’ve simplified processes. We’ve moved towards a sort of ‘just in time’ economy.

“There is an element where you have to make sure you’re available for ‘just in case.’ You have to plan for things going wrong.”

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said he was “proud” of the way airport and airline staff had responded.

"Remember, the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport," he told the BBC. “The airport didn’t shut for days. We shut for hours."

He said Heathrow's backup power supply, designed for emergencies, worked as expected, but it wasn’t enough to run the whole airport, which uses as much energy as a small city.

“That’s how most airports operate," said Woldbye, who insisted “the same would happen in other airports" faced with a similar blaze.

Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel, and saw 83.9 million passengers last year.

Friday’s disruption was one of the most serious since the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which shut Europe’s airspace for days.

Passengers on about 120 flights were in the air when Friday's closure was announced and found themselves landing in different cities, and even different countries.

Mark Doherty and his wife were halfway across the Atlantic when the inflight map showed their flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Heathrow was turning around.

“I was like, you’re joking,” Doherty said before the pilot told passengers they were heading back to New York.

Doherty called the situation “typical England — got no back-up plan for something happens like this. There’s no contingency plan.”

Associated Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha at Heathrow Airport contributed to this report.