Angela Stanford digs deep to reach 100 consecutive major starts

Angela Stanford spent most of 2023 looking for solutions. As her work with Golf Channel ramped up, the now part-time LPGA participant would typically discover a place to apply after the printed. On one such event, she was at a golf course in Midland, Michigan, hitting yellow-striped golf balls that have been largely out of filth, blended with just a few clumps of grass.

It was there that Stanford realized – she wasn’t executed.

“I feel it simply hit me that every thing that occurred as much as that time, I let it shake my confidence,” she mentioned.

And so, Stanford put her TV gig to the facet and rededicated herself to a objective she set just a few years again to turn out to be the primary LPGA participant to succeed in 100 consecutive main championship appearances. Stanford, 46, owns the present longest streak at 97. It began on the 2002 McDonald’s LPGA Championship and extends by final yr’s AIG Girls’s British Open. Throughout that stretch of 97 majors, Stanford made 66 cuts and posted 14 top-10 finishes.

Cristie Kerr’s main streak ended at 92 (with 76 made cuts). The following finest in LPGA historical past is Betsy King with 73 (67 made cuts).

“That’s lots of perseverance,” mentioned LPGA Corridor and World Golf Corridor of Famer Judy Rankin, “and lots of good golf for a really very long time.”

Angela Stanford a vice captain of America workforce walks with Rose Zhang throughout ultimate apply previous to the Solheim Cup at Finca Cortesin Golf Membership on September 21, 2023 in Casares, Spain. (Photograph by David Cannon/Getty Pictures)

The one male participant courting again to 1950 who has performed in 100 consecutive majors is Jack Nicklaus, who owns the file for males’s golf with 146 consecutive main begins (1962 Masters Match by 1998 U.S. Open). Solely 16 gamers even performed in 100-plus majors whole in that span.

The longest energetic majors streak in males’s golf belongs to Adam Scott at 89. The Aussie’s streak started on the 2001 British Open Championship.

The LPGA main schedule has been extraordinarily lean at occasions, with lengthy stretches within the 60s and 70s with solely two majors. In 2013, the LPGA added a fifth main, the Amundi Evian Championship, which Stanford received in 2019 at age 40.

Stanford’s first LPGA title got here in 2003 on the ShopRite LPGA Basic, and her most up-to-date got here in 2020 on the Volunteers of America Basic, not removed from her Texas residence.

A seven-time winner on the LPGA, Stanford’s rededicated offseason included two-a-days as a lot as attainable. She beloved each minute of the grind. Her quest to succeed in 100, nevertheless, will likely be a taller order than earlier years provided that her precedence standing dipped to No. 95 after she made solely 9 begins in 2023.

As Stanford’s mom Nan fell more and more in poor health with most cancers, she discovered it tough to focus lengthy sufficient to apply. Nan died on March 9, 2022, at residence in Saginaw at age 66 and, three weeks later, Stanford teed it up at Mission Hills Nation Membership one final time.

For the higher a part of two years, Stanford wasn’t herself.

“You’re simply on this state of fog,” she mentioned, “the place you may’t suppose, and you may’t focus lengthy sufficient on something, and you haven’t any vitality to do something.”

Stanford pulled out of the HSBC Girls’s Champions in Singapore, certainly one of her favourite occasions on tour, in 2022 to be along with her mother.

She lately wrote a letter to the occasion asking for a sponsor exemption as a result of she’d like an opportunity to say thanks and goodbye to an occasion she’s beloved for a very long time. A winner there in 2012, Stanford by no means dreamed she’d go so far-off from residence to play a recreation she beloved.

Writing to ask for sponsor exemptions pains Stanford, who by no means needed to be given something.

“Now I’m at a degree the place I might have some assist,” she mentioned, “and it’s a really susceptible place to be in.”

Angela Stanford of the US celebrates successful the Evian Championship with the trophy throughout Day 4 of The Evian Championship 2018 at Evian Resort Golf Membership on September 16, 2018 in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photograph by Stuart Franklin/Getty Pictures)

The primary LPGA main of the season is the Chevron Championship April 18-21 in Stanford’s native Texas. There are a selection of how she will be able to play her means into that discipline. Successful, after all, takes care of every thing.

At the moment 450th within the Rolex Rankings, Stanford would wish to skyrocket into the highest 40 by March 18, which is asking quite a bit. She might earn a sponsor exemption, and she or he’s ready to put in writing that letter. The most probably route is to rank excessive sufficient within the 2024 Race to the CME Globe standings following the LPGA Match Play at Shadow Creek to be a part of the ultimate discipline fill.

Ought to Stanford make it to Chevron, her 99th begin would come on the U.S. Girls’s Open at Lancaster Nation Membership. She plans to ask the USGA for a one-time exemption, ought to she want it. Different methods embrace the highest 75 of the Rolex Rankings, high 10 of the present CME factors listing or join a qualifier.

The a centesimal could be on the KPMG Girls’s PGA June 20-23 at Sahalee Nation Membership in Washington.

Angela Stanford of the US performs her shot from the eleventh tee through the second spherical of The Chevron Championship at The Membership at Carlton Woods on April 21, 2023 in The Woodlands, Texas. (Photograph by Carmen Mandato/Getty Pictures)

Stanford kicks off her Street to 100 at this week’s Drive On Championship in Bradenton, Florida. It’s her twenty fourth season on the LPGA, and she or he’s the one participant within the discipline of 120 who’s over the age of 40.

If Stanford will get to 100, Rankin believes she’ll be the one participant to ever do it.

“I feel it’s each cash,” mentioned Rankin when it comes to larger purses, “and it’s additionally, partly, the problem of being that good for that lengthy.”

In school at TCU, Stanford received the workforce’s most constant award all 4 years. That consistency, she believes, is what’s led to her longevity within the recreation. She’s going to point out up every day till she will be able to’t.

“Some folks name that cussed,” mentioned Stanford, “I simply suppose that’s who I’m. It’s my make-up. I feel attending to 100 would matter simply as a lot as successful one other main or successful one other match.”

Stanford lately bumped into her outdated school coach, Angie Ravaioli-Larkin, within the Shady Oaks locker room in Fort Price. Ravaioli-Larkin requested the way it was going. Stanford mentioned that in the midst of a placing drill that day, a thought hit her like a truck: Oh my gosh, what if this doesn’t work?

It received’t be for a scarcity of effort.

“I feel the factor I may be most pleased with is that I labored onerous at it,” mentioned Stanford. “I’ve had a few of my happiest days the final three weeks of my life.”