Even Jack Nicklaus commended a Fort Worth and TCU alum’s big win that we should all cherish

Angela Stanford was 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean when she received a text message from one of the best women’s golfers in the world, who was giving her the head’s up that the best golfer ever gave her a shout out on Twitter.

The text message from World Golf Hall of Famer Juli Inkster to Stanford read, “When Jack Tweets at you you’ve know you made it.”

Stanford quickly called up Twitter, and there it was. A message for the world to see, from Jack Nicklaus himself.

“Whether it took 18 years or 18 months, savor your first major @Angela_Stanford! Congrats on a gutsy final-round 68 (just 25 putts!) at @EvaianChamp to erase 5-shot deficit. You earned it! Now enjoy it! And since 40 is the new 30, go win a few more! @LPGA”’

She did it.

At the age of 40, in her 76th major tour event, the golfer who has done it all finally did it all. On Sunday, Stanford won the Evian Championship in Évian-les-Bains, France for her first major championship.

The odds of her doing this, at her age, resided someplace in the Bermuda Triangle of Awful, Bad and Not Good.

On the 18th green, she accepted the trophy that she had previously accepted she knew she may never win. With an American flag draped around her shoulders, and looking towards the heavens, anyone who knows, or even has met, Stanford was free to wipe away a tear or two or 10.

While dirtbags and cheats all around us succeed daily, you desperately want good things to happen to good people, and Stanford is the best of sport. She is the best of TCU. She is the best of Boswell High School. She is the best of Fort Worth.

“I feel like I’ve been soaking it in since I got to my hotel room in France; I’ve seen this go badly more times than not,” Stanford told me in a phone interview Tuesday. She returned to Fort Worth from Europe late Monday. “I’ve come up short so many times.”

She has done everything someone could do in her chosen sport, except win a major.

The former TCU and Boswell star has been on the Tour since 2000 and won five previous tournaments. She was at TCU so long ago it was a member of the Western Athletic Conference.

Four times she has finished in the top five at a major. In 2003, she forced an 18-hole playoff in the U.S. Open in Portland, and finished second.

She’s made over $11 million in Tour winnings, and built a career as a professional golfer. She had not only accepted, but embraced, that golf, and life, is great. She didn’t need a major.

Stanford understood that her window to win that major was just about shut. In her mind, if God didn’t have it in the plans for Stanford to win a major, that was fine.

“There is a difference in believing you can still do something but when things around you tell that maybe your window has closed, you think it’s probably not going to happen,” Stanford said. “I’m probably one of the few people who thought maybe I could still do it. The others were my family and instructors. These players are so good and it’s just so hard to win at any age.”

She knows that.

She knows that now.

When she was a kid, and just barely losing in the U.S. Open in 2003, there was no need to worry. She was going to get back here. She was going to win one of these.

“That was my third year on the Tour and I had won a tournament, and in that moment I’m thinking, ‘I’m just getting started and I’ll get here again,’” she said. “My 40-year-old self would tell my 25-year-old self, ‘You may want to try to get that one this time because you don’t know if you’re going to get there again.’

“You don’t need to be that jaded when you’re that age. You need to be full of hope and thinking you are going to do it, and I would never want to change that. But I didn’t know.”

On Sunday afternoon, she had to wait for the others to finish before she knew she won. In that moment she was watching herself live out a fantasy that she had desperately wanted, and earned.

The hard part was that her parents were unable to attend; her mother, Nan, is currently fighting cancer for a second time. Nan has her good days, and her bad days.

Sunday was a good day. As Angela walked up the 18th fairway, she spoke with her mom over the phone; the only small hitch was they were both crying and sobbing so much they had to delay the conversation until after Angela had accepted her trophy.

Stanford said she received about 250 text messages and 50 emails from people all over. These aren’t people looking for money, or merely desperate to share in someone’s success; these are people who are genuinely giddy that Stanford had this moment.

Beyond just those well wishers, a giant check, Stanford will also receive the putter head made of gold that Ping gives to those who win a major.

“That’s one I’ve really wanted to get my hands on,” she said.

With this Major win, she received a five-year Tour exemption status. While she was unable to keep the big trophy that was handed to her on Sunday, she does have the replica that will go in her Fort Worth home.

“Maybe because I chased this for so long, and thought about it for so long, it’s all felt so surreal,” she said. “When they gave me that trophy, I thought, ‘Gosh, it’s real.’”

Just as The Golden Bear Tweeted, she earned it.