Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post’s Monday magazine.
Anna Nordqvist, one of the most dependable women golfers of our time, is well-placed to serve as Europe’s Solheim Cup captain at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands in September 2026. Give her a player who is a tad too exuberant and she would know how to calm her down; give her a girl who has worries on her mind and she would know how to listen. Now 37, she has played in nine Solheim Cups and been a player-cum-vice captain to Suzann Pettersen in the last two.
To add to her credentials, she was the first Solheim Cup player – in the 2013 edition at Colorado Golf Club – to make a hole-in-one and she polished off her match in the process. Nordqvist and Caroline Hedwall were 1 up standing on the tee of the short 17th in their second morning foursomes against Morgan Pressel and Jessica Korda when she holed out with a perfectly struck 7-iron from 187 yards.
“This is the right time for me to be captain,” said the Swede. “I still know the players and their caddies and [because of it], I’m approachable.” In a couple of interviews she ruled out the possibility of playing in the match again herself, though when pressed by the BBC’s Iain Carter on that excellent podcast The Chipping Forecast she briefly entertained second thoughts.
Never did Nordqvist see the good in people more than when she learned that her husband, Kevin McAlpine, from whom she was separated, had passed away in October 2023. How the caddie, former Scottish Amateur champion and the son of Hamish McAlpine, the well-known former Dundee United goalkeeper, had died was never made public, though Hamish did tell the Dundee Courier that he had been worried about his son for some time.
Nordqvist had no idea how badly the news would hit her but, in the months that followed, she marvelled at the support she had from her golfing colleagues. “Today, when I see any of them having a hard time, I know how they feel,” she said. “Once you understand what hard times are like, you can’t help but applaud when someone starts getting things back together.”
Family means the world to Nordqvist and, for all that her marriage to McAlpine was not an ongoing success – they married in 2022 and separated in ’23 – she was never happier than when she won the ’21 AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie with her husband on her bag and a flock of his relatives cheering her on from behind the ropes.
After bringing her greater experience to bear to defeat a nervous Dane by name of Nanna Koerstz Madsen at the 72nd hole she spoke at her press conference of how she had come to realise that success on the golf course went hand in hand with being comfortable in life.
McAlpine, while he waited for her, explained where he had been able to help, seeing his main contribution as bringing the shy Swede out of her shell. Early in his romance with Nordqvist, at the 2019 Solheim Cup, he was caddying for Lexi Thompson when she and Anna played one another in the singles. He said that their halved match had contributed to one of the most stressful days of his life, whereas his wife’s win at Carnoustie had been one of the best.
Somewhere in her jottings she will no doubt have told the story of her win in the 2017 Evian Championship, where her finish was seen as one of the most dramatic of all time.
When she first started out on tour, Nordqvist did not exactly revel in attention from the media, or that’s how it seemed. Maybe she was suspicious of journalists following a period in teenage years when she thought she would like to be a journalist. However, where she has never fallen out of love with golf, one week in a local newspaper office was all that it took to tell her that there was nothing she would like to do less.
Had I known earlier that we shared an addiction to notebooks – no doubt we will both have been coveting the handsome blue edition which has been prepared for next year’s Solheim Cup – I’m sure we would have enjoyed rather more in the way of conversation. I’ve no idea how many she has in her collection, but it is certainly enough to have had her mother saying a sharp, “Do you really need another one of these?”
Somewhere in her jottings she will no doubt have told the story of her win in the 2017 Evian Championship, where her finish was seen as one of the most dramatic of all time.
Languishing in a share of 11th after 36 holes in what the elements had turned into a three-round event, she was sharing the lead with Brittany Altomare after the 54th, and therefore final regulation, hole.
The two had to play the par-4 18th by way of a first extra hole when, at much the same time as they were delivered to the tee, a deluge of mighty hailstones looked as if it would have the better of both of them. As it turned out, Nordqvist shone above Altomare when her third shot negotiated hailstones and hillocks to stay put on the green as she recited the words of her grandfather: “Keep trying and keep believing.”
Nordqvist has no hesitation in reiterating that the ups and downs of her career have made her stronger and better able to cope with her new Solheim Cup role. She has already played the Bernardus Golf course with its owner, Robert van der Wallen and, for another plus, she won the Ladies European Tour’s Big Green Egg Open of ’22 at nearby Rosendaelsche Golfclub.
For those of us who are not in the know, the Big Green Egg is not some Easter treat but a species of cooking pot which can last a lifetime. Regain the Solheim Cup and the Nordqvist legacy could match it.