Europe beat the United States 15-13 at the Solheim Cup, held over three days at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands — and the story of the weekend was as much about putting speed and crowd energy as it was about the scoreline.
Team USA captain Angela Stanford didn't sugarcoat it afterwards. Her side, she said, simply didn't make enough putts on greens that ran slower than anything they were used to, even though the team had scouted the venue back in July when conditions were quicker. She took the blame herself for not pushing players hard enough to adjust their stroke — a tricky ask mid-tournament, since changing how hard you hit a putt is one of the harder things to rewire under pressure. Rain, including heavy downpours on the final Sunday, wasn't the culprit in her view.
There was at least one moment of American magic worth the trip. Late on Saturday, Jennifer Kupcho holed two putts totalling roughly 120 feet across the 17th and 18th greens to steal a point from the final match of the day, squaring the contest at 8-8 after four sessions. The team celebrated on the team bus with a crate of Dutch beer — "had to pull out some bottles for Jen," the squad posted on X.
The other American complaint? The fans. Bernardus was a wall of European support, loud and heavily outnumbering the travelling US contingent. Assistant captain Paula Creamer noted the American fans on site weren't as rowdy as usual, which mattered: she described the team as "momentum people" who feed off crowd energy. Stanford's consolation was that the next edition lands at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, where home crowds should be far more boisterous. Whether she'll still be captain then, she wouldn't say, hinting only that the US has "a lot of good ones coming" in the pipeline.
So why should this matter to a traveller? Because it doubles as a scouting report on an under-the-radar golf destination. Bernardus Golf, in the Dutch town of Cromvoirt near Den Bosch, hosted one of the biggest events in women's golf and drew the kind of festive, singing crowds more often associated with football than fairways. The Netherlands is a compact, easy country for a golf trip — flat terrain, excellent course conditioning, and greens that, apparently, run slow even in summer. If the pros needed a day to adjust, weekend players should budget for it too.
For golf travellers, the takeaway is practical: arrive early enough to acclimatise to green speeds, and expect an enthusiastic local crowd if a big event comes to town. And if women's team golf hooks you, circle 2027 — Valhalla in Louisville will host the rematch, with a home crowd expected to make up for everything the Americans felt was missing in the Netherlands. Coverage via Japan Today.