LPGA Tour golfer Angela Stanford celebrates Sunday after winning the Evian Championship in France for her first major championship.EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France – In her 18th year on the LPGA Tour, after a wild and tearful final few holes, Angela Stanford became a major tournament champion Sunday.
It was a long journey to an unlikely one-shot victory at the Evian Championship for a golfer who believed as a rookie in 2001 that major titles would come sooner than her 40th birthday – and probably not in France.
“I would have laughed, ‘No way, it’s going to happen before,'” said Stanford, a Texan whose runner-up finish at the 2003 U.S. Women’s Open was the first of 13 top-10 performances in majors without a win.
“I didn’t know at the time how close I was,” she reflected of that playoff loss 15 years ago. “It was only my third year, and I had no idea what I was doing, to be perfectly honest.”
Those feelings returned on the 17th tee at Evian Resort Golf Club, she said, after a double bogey at the par-3 16th dropped Stanford out of a tie for the lead with Amy Olson.