Team USA celebrated a bit too early before falling to Team Europe 15-13 in the 2026 Solheim Cup in the Netherlands on Sunday.
United States captain Angela Stanford took a case of Heineken beer onto the team bus to celebrate Jennifer Kupcho’s late heroics — bringing in nearly 120 feet of putts over the last two holes at Bernardus on Saturday night, according to Golf Week.
Kupcho yelled “Vamos!” on the 17th green in the direction of Carlota Ciganda, her European opponent in Sunday’s Singles session.
The match was tied at 8 heading into the final round, and Team Europe established its dominance in the Singles session to earn seven points.
Ciganda collected the decisive point with a 4&2 victory over Kupcho to secure the Cup.
“I was really happy to see that I was playing against Kupcho,” Ciganda said Sunday. “She’s a fighter, I’m a fighter, and I told her, ‘Look, great playing.’ I mean, even yesterday what she did was amazing on 17 and 18.
“But today I knew she had no chance. I was like, I want to kill you. I love beating the Americans.”
Team Europe boarded its bus and turned on music while enjoying each other’s company on Saturday.
They too had drinks on their team bus, but nothing was recorded with cameras or phones, Charlotte Woad noted.
“Solheim Cup is to be celebrated on a Sunday, not a Saturday,” Europe assistant captain Mel Reid said. “We’re just happy that we’re the ones now to take two crates of beer on the bus.”
“We always say that our gift is being a unit in Europe, and there have been at times, the last couple of Solheim Cups where that has started to shift,” said Reid, “and it’s been a little bit, not a shift, but it’s not been as probably natural as it has been in previous years. Well, this is a shift.”
