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SOLHEIM CUP MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 9, 2015

St. Leon-Rot, Germany

JEREMY FRIEDMAN: Good afternoon, everybody, or good morning, and good afternoon, Judy and Karen, out in France today. Thank you for joining us for our preview conference call previewing the Evian Championship and the Solheim Cup today. I'm Jeremy Friedman with the Golf Channel communications department. Joining me today to preview this week's Evian Championship and the Solheim Cup are Golf Channel's LPGA analyst, Hall of Famer and two-time U.S. Solheim Cup team Judy Rankin, major champion and two-time European Solheim Cup team member Karen Stupples, and LPGA veteran Kay Cockerill.

The next two weeks, NBC Sports Group is gearing up to showcase two historic weeks in women's golf. This week, as we know, is the final major on the LPGA Tour in 2015, the Evian Championship, followed next week by the biennial Solheim Cup taking place in Germany. This week Golf Channel-NBC will combine for more than 22 hours of tournament coverage at the Evian Championship in France, and then next week Golf Channel will air nearly 30 hours of match play coverage from Germany for the Solheim Cup Friday through Sunday, September 18th through 20th.

Now on to our panel to talk about the next couple of weeks. First off, Judy Rankin, one of the most respected voices in the game. She made her Golf Channel on-air debut with us at the 2009 Solheim Cup when it was contested at Rich Harvest Farms near Chicago. She serves as our lead analyst for our LPGA Tour coverage. She successfully captained two U.S. Solheim Cup teams in '96 and '98. She will serve as a booth analyst both this week at Evian Championship and next week at the Solheim Cup. So Solheim Cup next week will be her third in the broadcast booth for Golf Channel.

Karen Stupples, 2004 Women's British Open champion and two-time European Solheim Cup team member in 2005 and '11 also will be in the broadcast booth rotating with Judy this week at the Evian Championship and next week at the Solheim Cup.

Kay Cockerill, who is this week in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, for the Hotel Fitness Championship on the Web.com Tour, she will join Karen and Judy next week for the Solheim Cup where she'll be a course reporter during our match play coverage. Next week at the Solheim Cup will be Kay's 11th Solheim Cup that she's covered for NBC and Golf Channel.

This call's being transcribed and will be made available following the call.

Ladies, going to open up with a first question to Karen and Judy. First off, thank you for joining us from France this afternoon your time. Give us the atmosphere out at Evian as the players get ready for the season's final major and then also leading up to the Solheim Cup next week.

KAREN STUPPLES: Well, it's a bit of a tough situation for the players playing in the Solheim Cup because they've got to try and focus on this week first, yet they're incredibly excited about getting ready for the Solheim Cup matches, so they have to take care of business first. For some players, they're going to look to try and find some form for ones that haven't really been playing very well this year. I'm thinking particularly of Michelle Wie knowing that she's now finally fit and I want to see some good results for her. I think it's a good week in general for her to get a bit of confidence before going into Solheim Cup because ultimately the Solheim Cup is a tough place to showcase your game.

JUDY RANKIN: I would just add that it's a big week here, it's a good week here. The weather is ideal if it holds through the week and I think a lot of players have this on their mind. But I think those players on both sides, Europe and the U.S., who are going to the Solheim Cup, you can't help but have that in the back of your mind. I think it puts a little spring in your step if you have not been playing well, though as Karen just suggested, you are personally under some pressure to get it together this week. That would be Paula Creamer, aside from Michelle, because Paula just has -- I don't know what it is, but the game deteriorated a little bit through the season, and with the pressure of trying to make the team there at the end, she just did not play well. That is so unusual because she's, I guess, one of the most consistent players over the years that she's been a professional that we've known. So I'm going to bet that she has worked very hard the last few weeks to make the captain proud of the pick that she made.

JEREMY FRIEDMAN: Thank you, ladies. Kay, you'll join Judy and Karen next week in Germany. This will be your 11th Solheim Cup from a TV coverage standpoint. Give us a little sense of what are you looking forward to next week in Germany?

KAY COCKERILL: Oh, that's a pretty broad question, but this is definitely one of my favorite events to cover. I think it's a premier event in women's sports or one of the premier events in women's golf because it showcases all these players at their best. I think the combination of the venue, the television coverage and the amount of fans that show up just bring out the best in the players. I think a lot of that also's the match play format which allows players to kind of play with a little more reckless abandon and perhaps be more aggressive, and the results often are some pretty fantastic golf shots.

This competition has become very heated over the last few years, particularly with Europe winning the last two and winning for the first time on U.S. soil. The United States team now sort of has their back up against the wall and has to reclaim that cup, and they've got to do it by playing their best golf because Europe is no longer a somewhat easy win. They are a formidable team, they bring their best stuff, and I look forward to just seeing great players hitting great shots with the ultimate pressure and that's what this sport's all about.

JEREMY FRIEDMAN: Thank you, ladies. We will now open it up for questions.

Q. This would be a Solheim question for Judy primarily, but if Karen and Kay have any thoughts, I would like to hear that as well. The U.S. team has basically taken the same crew over that it had the last time around, I think it's 11 out of 12. I was wondering, Judy mas a two-time captain, if you could sort of speak to the pros and cons of taking an experienced team to an event like this even though the experiences may not all necessarily be positive, and weighing the pros and cons of trying to balance out veterans with new blood.
JUDY RANKIN: Well, there certainly are pros and cons to doing that. For those who may not know, the new blood on this team is 19-year old Alison Lee, but she is such an experienced match player and she is such a composed young player that I feel like this stage might have been meant for her. She's perfect for this stage. Everyone else has played, everyone else has the experience of being beat, so sometimes you think maybe the crew that got beat, maybe they have something to prove. It's never easy playing away from home, but I feel like the Americans are up to the task this time.

That by no way says this European team isn't good because it is good, but I feel as though Juli Inkster is the right captain at the right time. I think they are going to get down to business. I think she's very aware of things like rest, things like just really doing everything so that you can do the job at hand. She is such a respected person that this team will in every sort of way respond to her, I'm sure.

The European team, I mean, they have to come in with a certain amount of confidence because they've been winners and they've been winners twice. To be quite honest, the last time they were winners in a very big way. They have some young players. I'm not sure about the rookies necessarily, but young players like Charley Hull, a player like Caroline Masson from Germany, that's really big to have two players on the team from Germany for them.

I just think it's some of the greatest golf to watch. I think the Solheim Cup and the Ryder Cup add some sort of -- they add something to what we know as professional golf, along with I guess the Presidents Cup that's coming up here pretty soon, that's a little unfamiliar week by week. It brings on emotion, and I think emotion is what makes it so much fun.

KAY COCKERILL: Just to quickly jump on the back side of what Judy said, I think there's nothing that heightens your resolve and determination more than being denied what you really want, and this U.S. team really wants that cup back. So that's going to fuel their fire. If they were ambivalent or there was a little less fire in their gut at some point, I think they're extra charged up. They are in some sense the underdogs now because they've lost the last two and that's a powerful position. I think they're playing it as the underdogs and that's the way Juli's trying to have their mindset. You guys have to go out and reprove yourselves and reearn this cup back, and we'll see if that can fire them up and get the kind of performances that she needs out of the players.

Q. Karen Stupples, could you describe how the pressure that you felt when you played in the Solheim Cup twice differed from a regular tournament, please?
KAREN STUPPLES: Yes. That's very easy one actually. In a regular tournament, you start off on the first tee and you might be a bit nervous, or if it's a major or just a regular event, there's always some first tee nerves but they soon dissipate, they soon disappear. As the round progresses, you find a little comfort zone in the middle of the round, you're just cruising along doing your own business, doing your game. Towards the end, if you've got a good round going or you're in contention, you might feel those nerves again coming down the stretch, but typically you have a nice comfortable period in the middle of a round where you can just relax a little bit and enjoy the game.

In the Solheim Cup, the nerves that you feel on the first tee are twice, three times than what you feel in any other tournament because you're representing your continent or your country and you have the crowd chanting and cheering your names. It's a crazy feeling when you stand on that first tee. But not only that, those first tee nerves continue through every single shot. There's no calmness in the middle of the round. Every single shot is like a first tee nerve shot, and that's what makes it a very, very special event to play in because you really feel like you're living on the edge when you're playing in the Solheim Cup.

Q. For everybody here, how much do you think captains really make a difference and where do they make the most difference?
JUDY RANKIN: Well, I think they set a tone that makes a difference, but I also think -- I do think that pairings matter. You can't control how players play, but you can give them their best shot. I think in the case of Juli Inkster and Karen Koch also, they know all these players so well and they know their ups and downs and they know who they would like to play with, who they think their games match up well with and so on. I do think a captain can shoot themselves in the foot with a really off pairing.

I've put one together one time that I was kind of soundly criticized for, and turned out they were right and I was wrong. You hate to do that to the rest of the team. So it's really important that you know these players well and that you put them together well.

It's really important that a captain knows who has to have rest. What Caroline Hedwall did the last time around going five matches and winning five matches, well, it was previously unheard of. I think the emotion is a big reason that it is such a tiring week, it's such a physical week for the players.

So I am one who actually does think the captains do matter, but I think every time we see the big matches played, the captains in ensuing years learn more and more about what works.

KAREN STUPPLES: I agree with Judy. I think captains are huge when it comes to putting the pairings together. The captain can be an inspiring figure, too, and someone that the players really want to play well for and they want to achieve. The captain, if they have the right words to say at the right time for a player that might be down in a match that can really pick them up and get them going and can give them some confidence, I think that's a huge thing for a captain to do, too. The primary goal is to pair the players and to manage the team in a way that you do get the rest without compromising the pairings. That's a pretty big role. The captains have to have their wits about them to keep on top of that.

KAY COCKERILL: To follow up with what Karen said, I think both captains have to be a psychologist to know when and how to say the right words to keep your players in the right frame of mind because, as Karen said, it's unlike any other competition and your mind can get to spinning. To be able to settle that player down and get them back into their proper focus and their proper routine to hit their best shots is very key.

And also I think the key is to be flexible a little bit. If you've put a pairing out and you see suddenly that they're playing great, then keep them together. Likewise, on the flip side, if you've seen in the morning that a certain player's really struggling, it may be time to sit them down and to really be a little flexible and go with the flow somewhat. Have your plan A, but maybe be willing to tweak it a little as the situations arise.

Q. If I can just get a quick follow-up. Judy, Juli played for you in '98. What can you tell us about her as a Solheim Cup participant?
JUDY RANKIN: Well, I think actually she's one player who's exactly the same whether she's playing in the Solheim Cup or playing on Tuesday afternoon. She's highly competitive. She works really hard at her golf game and she takes a certain amount of joy in working at her golf game. She's very much, I think, one of the people and even then a little bit of an elder statesman at that point that you could pair with anyone. It's great to have somebody like that on the team that's easygoing and will figure it out no matter who you put them with. You need a player like that, or two.

But quickly just to add on to what Kay said, she is so right because a captain also has to be ready to change her mind and to make a decision on the fly. I know you'll walk with players in the morning and you'll say, How do you feel? Come Saturday morning, you're talking to players and saying, Do you think you could go Saturday afternoon, could you go one more time? You have to have a feel for how they look and who's telling you the absolute truth because nobody's going to say, I can't do it.

Q. I'm just switching over to the Evian Championship. With No. 1 in the world Inbee Park going for her career Grand Slam, what do you think her chances are this week?
KAREN STUPPLES: I personally think they're very good. I spoke to Inbee's caddie early on today and he was saying how much better she feels on the green. She feels the last couple years when they changed the course she struggled a bit putting, but now that she's got this new green book that has everything all charted on it and everything looks like she's able to read the putts better. And of course if you feel confident on the read, the chances that the putt's going in the hole are far greater. We've all seen Inbee play over these last few years. When she makes putts, she rarely loses, so I think that she stands a great chance.

KAY COCKERILL: I echo Karen's assessment. I think week in and week out Inbee is the player that you have to consider to win the tournament. Whether it's an event in Ohio or it's a major championship like this, she has the perfect makeup of what it takes to play consistently good golf. She is so mentally calm, she's so consistent in her belief of herself, and that putting stroke is something to be envied in the golfing world. All those elements together and her ability to withstand and hit shots as if it were Tuesday afternoon on Sunday afternoon when the championship's on the line, that's what separates her, and she has to be the top, like I said, week in and week out.

JUDY RANKIN: I think when she won at Turnberry not that many weeks ago now, that automatically immediately put this on her radar and it gave the importance. It was already very important. I look at to when she had the chance for a Grand Slam and she went to St. Andrews a few years ago. Stacy Lewis ended up being the winner, but she has faced that kind of pressure before, the pressure that she thinks she might feel here and it was kind of hard for her. She said she didn't handle that as well as she might. I think she's a couple years older and I think she's really starting to be an old (inaudible) in her career. It's one of the things we know about all the best players, they handle these situations well and she's got to be a favorite here.

Q. Kay, you've played against and observed Juli Inkster for a long time. There was a lot of talk at the last Ryder Cup about how the American captain didn't relate well to some of his players. Do you think that Juli, the fact that she competes still on the LPGA Tour and the players know her in that way will be a plus for her at the Solheim Cup?
KAY COCKERILL: I do, I do. And I think Judy and Karen sort of related to it a little bit before. She's a mentor to almost every player out there. She's someone who is a source of inspiration. She is done it all. She's won major championships, Hall of Fame, mother, sister, wife. She is the prototypical inspiration for any young woman trying to achieve everything and balance everything and be just a regular person and she shows that. She's true. As anyone who has spent any amount of time with Juli knows, she's just a real person. She hasn't let any of all these accolades go to her head and I think that groundedness is what makes her so special. The fact that she's still relevant and she's out there competing and making cuts and contending on occasion for tournaments, and she just won last week so she obviously still has that winning attitude and winning capability even at age 55, which is remarkable I think that is as a source of inspiration, and as just a real person that players feel like they can talk to and tell the truth to.

I know that she doesn't sugarcoat things. She's going to be honest in how she speaks with the players and they're going to respect whatever she says. If she says you're sitting down, I think you're tired, you're struggling a little bit, or go practice your putting for an hour tonight, those players are going to do it.

I think she's going to be a wonderful captain. Whether they win or not, we'll see, but I think she's going to instill a lot of confidence and bring out the best in her players, and win lose or draw, they're going to have a great experience at the end of the week playing for her.

Q. Karen and Judy kind of alluded to this briefly during the introductory remarks. I just wanted to circle back around to this week. It would seem that Michelle and Paula really kind of need to get something going to get, A, physically or, B, mentally something going momentum-wise heading into this week. I wonder if you could expound upon those thoughts.
JUDY RANKIN: Well, now that they don't have anything to prove at this point, they're on the team, but what they really need to do right now is build their own confidence for going into next week. The best way to do that is to perform well. I mean, every player will tell you, when all your ducks are in a row, you just tee off in a different frame of mind than when you're still trying to find it.

This is all about their confidence. This isn't about who they play with or who they get paired with or any of those things. It's play well this week, try to give yourself -- try to get yourself into contention, give yourself a chance to win, and rebuild your confidence again.

As I said earlier, Paula Creamer's one of the most consistent players I've ever watched in my life. What's happened to her this last season is a little surprising to me. And Michelle, well, Michelle has fought so many little illnesses and injuries and different things this year, and really how she comes out of the box is kind of a mystery. But she's the kind of explosive player that she could shoot 64 tomorrow and be right back in the mix.

But I think this week is all about their personal confidence, the confidence that they have in themselves, and I think if a captain sees that come back, it will put their mind at ease.

KAREN STUPPLES: The Solheim Cup is an absolute pressure cooker of stress and emotion, and it's no place to go to find your golf game. You really have to be on top form when you get there if you want to have a successful week. I really feel like somebody like Michelle Wie, prime example, she's been injured for most of the year. She's gone to Canada. She's taken some of the strapping off. She says she's fit and healthy, yet she doesn't play the Yokohama Tire the following week.

I would have thought if she was, as she said, rusty, she needed to play a few more events and maybe that one extra event could have been good. She's kind of putting all of her eggs in one basket this week to find her form, to build her confidence Judy was talking about going into next week.

I don't have any real problem with Paula's game. I really feel like she puts so much pressure on herself. She was in the spot to be playing on the team for so long and it was almost just a given that she was going to be on that team and then all of a sudden she got passed. She had to look at it and say, Crikey, I'm not actually on the team I thought I was supposed to be playing on. That realization and trying to achieve and trying to play well in those three last qualifying events, I think she really tried to overextend herself and she was really out of her comfort zone in that position. So I have no doubt that Paula will get her game ready. There's nobody that I personally would trust more to get their game ready for this event than Paula, and I'm not surprised that Juli picked her even in spite of the few bad weeks that she had.

KAY COCKERILL: Just to top off what Judy and Karen said, and I do agree with Judy that it's all about inner confidence, and hopefully those two will find that inner confidence this week and shed some of the issues that they've had to deal with throughout the year.

For Michelle Wie, the physical is the number one issue. Is she going to make it through this week at the Evian and then successfully make it to the Solheim Cup? So for her my biggest concern is the physical issue.

But these two players, Paula and Michelle, are superstars. They love the big stage, they love the bright lights, they excel on that big stage, they crave it. So I have no doubt that if they are in okay physical shape and their confidence is getting back a little bit, I think they will excel on the big stage. They have what a lot of players always hope for, and this is the good thing, is the short-term memory in a good way. I think they have the ability to forget bad things and compartmentalize and focus on the here and now.

I think, as Karen said, a lot of that pressure's behind them in terms of being picked and the team is selected. Let's bring your best stuff. I think Juli, being the captain that she is, is going to bring the best out of both of them. The only qualification, like I said, is Michelle Wie physically able to play and make it through 18 or 36 holes.

JUDY RANKIN: Kay, just to interrupt for a second, just for your information, we were told today by her coach, by David Leadbetter, that he really believes and she believes now that she is 100 percent fit.

KAY COCKERILL: That's great, and it will be interesting to watch her this week and see if that strength continues to grow or if she has any kind of setbacks.

JUDY RANKIN: It's a hilly golf course here.

Q. It's interesting, the whole concept of being an underdog. In these competitions it almost seems like everyone wants to be the underdog even when you look at the Ryder Cup, too. There's less pressure on us. Juli has seized on that. Yet looking at the bookmaking houses, I think I looked at 22 of them last night and all 22 had the Americans as the favorite.
What is it about the idea of being an underdog that is like some kind of magic pill in these events, and do you think it matters?

KAREN STUPPLES: I think it just makes you a little bit more scrappy, a little bit more willing to fight just a little bit harder. There's no real pressure on the performance because you're not expected to win, so you can go out there and just show everybody what you've got, but with a little chip on your shoulder to say you know what, I may not be thought of that I'm as good but I am as good. So that's what the underdog role does for the players.

KAY COCKERILL: When I harken back to when I won my first U.S. Women's Amateur, I was the underdog in every single match and that was a big strength because I didn't know much about my opponent or I didn't care, and all I was concerned about was trying to make it through to the next match. When you don't have to prove anything, you can just go out and sort of have that -- there's nothing more powerful -- excuse my blundering a little bit. There's nothing more powerful than that ability to want to prove yourself and prove everybody else wrong. If you can play from that position, it's a wonderful position.

The flip side is when you're extremely confident and you are the one expected to win and you have total confidence, that's another powerful place to play from, but you have to have total belief in yourself to have success with that kind of attitude.

JUDY RANKIN: Another thing that plays into this, and I think we can very fairly include Caroline Hedwall in this conversation, is that having a partner, having someone who's got your back sometimes can really be helpful. It can allow you to get going again. All these players have learned to play with a partner, so you can play partnership golf and have it put more pressure on you, but there is also the opposite, which I think these players are experienced at now, which is it is so nice to have somebody who can save you on that occasion that you need it.

MODERATOR: If there are no more questions in the queue, ladies, thank you for joining us today. As mentioned earlier, there will be a transcript that will come out later this afternoon from this call.

Again, Golf Channel and NBC have coverage of the Evian Championship. Golf Channel's coverage starts tomorrow at 5:00 a.m. Eastern time going through Sunday, then Solheim Cup coverage on Golf Channel next Friday threw Sunday. Ladies, thank you very much. Thank you everybody for participating in the call

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