Livescore
Anna Nordqvist attended her first Solheim Cup as a fan in 2003 at Barseback Golf and Country Club in Sweden not long after she’d taken up the game. The gallery was five deep and the atmosphere? Nothing short of electric. She dreamed of one day getting her chance.
Now, 22 years later, she’s a veteran of nine Solheim Cup teams and the next European captain. The steely yet down-to-earth Swede who doesn’t like drama or gossip, knows the landscape of potential players as well as anyone and will take the role seriously.
“It’s beyond my wildest childhood dreams to be a captain,” said 37-year-old Nordqvist, who opened her 17th year on the LPGA last week in Thailand.
Twice a playing vice captain for good friend Suzann Pettersen, Nordqvist plans to play a full season on the LPGA this year. The three-time major winner won her ninth and most recent LPGA title at the 2021 AIG Women’s British Open at Carnoustie.
“I still feel like I still have the game,” Nordqvist told Golfweek, “and I want to end my career on my terms, and I don’t feel like I’ve really been able to do that the last couple of years.”
The woman who leads Europe at the 2026 Solheim Cup at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands has been battle tested in ways she wouldn’t wish on anyone. Two years ago, not long after Nordqvist revealed on social media that she and husband Kevin McAlpine, an LPGA caddie, were in the process of a divorce, McAlpine died suddenly at age 39.
Nordqvist described it as watching her life shatter into a thousand pieces.
“I think to be able to deal with it, to handle it, to get over it and like all the practical stuff that she’s had to deal with in the aftermath,” said Pettersen, “I think you do change by nature, how you look at life, how you look at relationships, how you look at, I don’t know, the game of golf means nothing, right?
“What’s the importance of another shot or another tournament or another, I don’t know, an another victory? I really just think it puts life in perspective when you go through a kind of severeness like that, and I really hope I don’t need to see any other friends have to go through what she’s been through because I know it’s been tough as hell to be honest, literally. I don’t think there’s another word for it.”
Several years ago, Nordqvist got her first tattoo – “I am enough” – after going through a personal storm, not knowing that she was about to face an even bigger one. Last year, she got a second tattoo, promising her mother it would be her last.
“When I got through the hardest days, sort of the hardest time, I was really only trying to put one foot in front of the other and that kind of became a motto,” said Nordqvist, “not trying to look too far ahead.
“Sometimes just getting out of bed or sometimes just, you know, getting through the day or having to face something like really hard, straight on. So I have a tattoo on my spine that says, One day at a time.”
Though the lifelong planner and writer welcomes more spontaneity in her life now, Nordqvist will certainly have a journal or two filled with inspiration leading up to September 2026.
She’s already had dinner with former Solheim Cup captain Pia Nilsson and knows that plenty more advice is on the way, though she’ll stay true to herself. A gritty player who meets the moment, Nordqvist owns a 17–15–3 record in her nine Solheim appearances. She qualified for her first Solheim in 2009 as an LPGA rookie without a full card and counts the 2013 appearance, when Europe won for the first time on American soil, as a favorite.
Nordqvist made the first hole-in-one in Solheim Cup history that week in Colorado to come roaring back alongside Caroline Hedwall in Saturday morning foursomes. And while that was a personal highlight to be sure, she points to a photo taken later that afternoon of her celebrating with future captains Catriona Matthew and Suzann Pettersen along the sidelines as a standout memory.
For Nordqvist, the Solheim has always been about team. And that team includes her family, best known for dressing up as “Anna’s bananas” in a show of support. The bananas actually tossed their costumes last year after sweating a little too much outside Washington, D.C.
Her brother has already happily lost sleep trying to work out their costumes for ’26.
Nordqvist began 2025 on a retreat in Bali where her trainer lives. What sounds like an exotic vacation actually began with a 6 a.m. opening session each day.
Nothing in Nordqvist’s life is taken for granted these days.
Over the summer, Nordqvist went to see a doctor about one thing and came out learning that she had cyst the size of a grapefruit in her stomach. On the second day of the offseason last November, she had the first surgery of her life at a cancer unit in Arizona to get it removed. She found out later that it was benign.
Nordqvist wasn’t allowed to lift anything for a month, which meant she had to get creative living alone on the second floor of a condo.
Once again, she emerged stronger.
“I think my life perspective is very different now … I would say I’m like completely different person,” said Nordqvist, “but like I’m really not. I’m just more myself, and I’m happy and content with where I’m at. It’s taken quite a lot of therapy, a lot of work to deal with a lot of the trauma that I’ve had to deal with, but I think I just wake up every day just trying to make the best.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Three-time LPGA major winner Anna Nordqvist named 2026 Solheim captain
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