Golf’s beloved television pioneer Judy Rankin returns to the booth next week for the 18th edition of the Solheim Cup. A 26-time winner on the LPGA, Rankin’s work schedule slowed down considerably in recent years, opening the door for Morgan Pressel to take over as lead analyst on LPGA coverage.
But with Pressel serving as an assistant captain for Stacy Lewis in Spain, Rankin happily agreed to fill in and will sit alongside good friends Terry Gannon and Juli Inkster for the Golf Channel broadcast.
This year’s Solheim Cup will be contested in Spain for the first time, Sept. 22-24, at the picturesque Finca Cortesin resort.
Rankin twice captained Team USA to victory in 1996 and 1998. Golfweek caught up with the 78-year-old World Golf Hall of Fame member before she headed overseas.
Golfweek: How exciting is it for you to be back in the booth for the Solheim?
Judy Rankin: It’s great. What a good friend of mine Terry (Gannon) is … a bit like Mike Tirico. He can carry the person next to him if he has to. Juli (Inkster) and I are going to share this fun. We have become, over time, quite good friends. I’m just really looking forward to it.
I feel like the Solheim Cup and the matches and the way that all works, both Juli and I are so familiar with so much of it, or maybe all of it. It’s a different animal than a tournament with 144 players.
GW: How is it more challenging?
JR: I think it’s a different kind of pressure for players. I think you have to be able to relate that and what it might be. You know, there’s a general pressure of match play anyway.
There is the pressure of playing for your country. And I’m speaking on both sides of the aisle here. There is oftentimes the pressure of having a partner and wanting to carry your part of the load. And then there is just the general pressure of it being so important to so many people – not just to you and your caddie or you and your parents, but to everybody in your circle and on your team and all those things.
Every day you’re trying to win a match and the matches overall. It’s a pressure that daily is like trying to win a tournament in some ways.
GW: For Europe, when you factor in that they’re on home soil, and it seems to be an even stronger team than we saw in 2021 – which was their strongest team ever – how do you think the vibe will be different, because it does feel like Europe’s not an underdog.
JR: I don’t think they are at all. I would expect it to be very close. If I were completely neutral and just trying to make odds, which I’m not capable of doing, I think they have the slight edge, I do.
That’s another part of the pressure. Part of the pressure is if you’re supposed to win. And part of the pressure is, as an underdog, trying to in. Players have a really good time, and they enjoy this so much, but make no mistake, this is a little bit personally important to each one of them.
GW: Who are you most curious about in terms of how they perform?
JR: I’ve never met her, I’ve never seen her play in person, but I’m pretty impressed with Linn Grant. And Charley Hull has just been lighting it up. I know she doesn’t have the win, but she has just been playing unbelievably well.
I think Charley, just because of the way she carries herself, she’s a little bit intimidating.
GW: (Charley) moves very fast and with authority.
She kind of wears that badge that I have no fear of failure.
I’ll be interested to see how Lilia Vu can perform. You’re not that long away from college, which there is maybe more match play there. When she’s on, she seems to be the kind of plyer that might aggravate you, bore you to death because she’s fairway and greens, and then she’s a good putter. If you’re waiting for her to make a mistake when she’s on, don’t hold your breath.
I’m thinking of Lexi Thompson when I ask this question. Is it possible to find your game at a Solheim Cup?
JR: I think it’s possible. You feel like you’re performing for 11 other people, 12 other people counting your captain. But you also have all of those people in support.
I do remember Adam Scott playing very poorly and really kind of considering where this was going to go, and Greg Norman put him on a Presidents Cup when he was the least likely pick you could imagine, and he regained his game and his confidence.
Could it be really good for her? Yes, it could.
I think when you go into these kind of matches, if you think that your game isn’t exactly where it should be, you have to find a way to wipe the slate clean in your head.
Match play is a little bit more of a reaction kind of golf, instead of the kind of golf you play every day in medal play. I do think you react to the situation and what your opponent is doing or has done. If you’ll let yourself react like that and not overthink it, who knows what you might do.
There isn’t probably one of these players on either team that needs to practice more. What they need to do is learn the golf course and warm up. So much of your instincts and what you know comes through. I think that’s always true under pressure.
The only way that doesn’t work under pressure is if you’re just getting in your own way.
GW: Do you think it matters that none of these American players have seen the golf course?
JR: Not really. I don’t know what day they will arrive, but I know they will play it a number of times. They’ll have nine-hole days so they won’t get exhausted. I’d rather see it and then go play than have seen it two months ago. I don’t think that’s going to be big factor.
GW: Having been a captain, how much pressure do you think Stacy is going to feel with the U.S. coming off two losses?
JR: She knows that going in and she’s known it ever since she became the captain. I think that’s another thing that will just cloud your mind. She’s trying to have her approach, a fresh approach.
In the end, you do the best you can do to try to know your players and know how to pair them and when to play them. But in the end, it’s the golf that matters. And that is, to a great degree, out of your hands. And you’re trying to tell players to play like a team member but play your own game.
Maybe there’s a little contradiction in team golf. I don’t think she’s under so much pressure.
I think she has probably an enormous desire to win, and an enormous desire to manage things really well, but I don’t think it’s a pressure kind of situation for her.
I think it’s more the pressure of doing it well and having your team feel as though you’re doing it well.
GW: What would you tell a rookie when trying to explain what this event means to women’s golf?
JR: If you look at the growth of the matches from then they started in 1990, it’s a tremendous ascent.
The fact that it is sought-after in all these places in America and in Europe, and that it draws so many people almost more than anything we know in women’s golf, it’s a story of its own.
I will tell you and I don’t mind saying it – me personally, maybe I’m a little too close to all of it. I have been very frustrated at television, at PGA Tour Radio, at every single outlet everywhere, that they didn’t not take this opportunity to really push the fact that we have two of the greatest events in golf back-to-back in Europe in Spain and Rome.
All I have heard about basically is the Ryder Cup, and nobody is a bigger fan of the Ryder Cup than me. I watch it every shot, and I’ve worked it.
But the fact that all of these outlets have not taken great advantage of these two spectacular weeks of golf in Europe and have so infrequently even mentioned that the Solheim Cup was happening and happening first, I would say has not been for the good of the game.
I tweeted it at some point. These fabulous two weeks of golf back-to-back in Europe, and as someone who read the tweet reminded me, both of those have junior events. Think what a big deal these two weeks are and the first week I won’t say has been ignored, but almost.
Somebody missed the proverbial boat and whoever somebody is, I hope I never hear again ‘for the good of the game.’
GW: What’s your favorite Solheim Cup memory?
JR: There are a lot of them, I have to tell you. And my husband was well for both of those (1996 and 1998). He had such a competitive sense about him and loved it so much, oh my gosh.
I will tell you one memory that was really a good one. Juli was playing Liselotte Neumann at Muirfield. This was before the 17th hole was redone. It had a monstrous bunker at the front left of the 17th green. Liselotte had put her second shot in the bunker; Juli was about 35 feet at least from the hole.
Liselotte plays one of the great bunker shots of all time, it was a tremendously long bunker shot. The pin was in the back right corner. And she plays this bunker shot to about 3 feet. It’s magnificent.
And then Juli Inkster makes that putt.
It was not on television because TV had gone off. Every person at Muirfield Village, which was 25,000 a day, everyone that was still there was at that green and it was really, really something.
Juli’s daughter Hayley was sitting on the cart with me. Juli told me the next day that they were walking back to their condo at the end of the day. Juli made the putt to win the match, I failed to say that.
Juli tells me the next day that they were walking back to the condo and Hayley says, ‘Mom, now I know why you do what you do.’
That’s one of my great memories.
