The wheels on the bus go round and round. The questions about the bus keep coming, too. The U.S. team bus at the Solheim Cup, that is.
They first arose on Saturday evening in the Netherlands, when Team USA erupted in sudsy celebration of Jennifer Kupcho’s fourball heroics, which had turned around the day’s last match. What had looked like a sure deficit heading into Sunday was now deadlocked, and the Americans were in a festive mood.
Out came beers on the team bus. As videos of the moment swirled on social media, so did questions — and criticism — from online commentators.
Wasn’t it too early to celebrate? How did the optics look? Might the boozy antics lead to a letdown? Provide the Europeans with extra motivation?
Leave it to the Internet to pour cold water on a good time.
In the euphoric aftermath of Kupcho’s clutch play, Stanford said she felt the “tide” had turned. Momentum had shifted in her team’s favor. But that was Saturday. On Sunday, the mo’ shifted again. The Europeans came out hot, winning six of the first eight singles matches to claim a lead they never relinquished.
Stanford wasn’t asked directly about the bus ride but she provided some of her thoughts on the matter anyway when asked about trying to manage her team through such an emotional high.
“Well, that’s kind of tricky because you don’t ever want to take away from that moment,” she said.
It’s a fine line, after all, allowing for justified exuberance without letting matters get out of hand. Stanford had been trying to tread it.
“The worst thing I could have done is go in there and be like, Okay, y’all, come off this high,” she said. “So you don’t want to take away from those moments. We’re never going to see anything like that again.”
Stanford said she’d checked in with her players to make sure the party hadn’t come at the expense of sleep.
“But I talked to Kupcho and everybody and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we got good rest and — but, yeah, it did take a minute to come off because it was a pretty high high.’”
Europe, as it turned out, had faced a version of the same test the day before.
Assistant captain Mel Reid described a similarly emotional moment after Friday’s session, when Celine Boutier holed a clutch up-and-down to salvage a half point. The mood on Europe’s team bus that evening, Reid said, was hardly subdued. But it wasn’t filmed.
“We were on the team bus — the skipper had to do some press. We were on the team bus. I said a few words. Nobody could hear me, which I think was great. The team bus is a special place for Team Europe. I think it’s where we really unite, we really get together. We put the music on and it’s a special place. I’m just glad there’s no cameras there.”
Whatever happened on that bus carried into the team hotel, where Reid said the mood shifted again.
“We got to the hotel and we put on a song, and I don’t know what it was, I just felt like it just changed the mood and united us. It was, like, weird. Like, we all just became, we just forgot what happened, like, the disappointment, and we just got back on it.”
By Sunday morning, Reid said, the pep talks were barely necessary.
“Not one of us needed to speak to any player, really. They just kind of knew what their job was today in a very calm, passionate, and fierce way. The horses are ready, just let them go, and they delivered.”
The bus got the headlines. The horses got the Cup.
