Karen Stupples: The only home Open champion snubbed for honours who is just grateful to be alive

Despite her achievement, Stupples received no recognition from Buckingham Palace — but right now her focus is on more important matters

Twenty years on and still no call from Buckingham Palace. Karen Stupples is the only home winner, male or female, of a British major since the war not to receive an award in the UK honours system. And in a week when the memories will flood back of her extraordinary triumph at Sunningdale, the snub will be further exposed in all its absurdity and yes, cruelty.
Stupples is here at the Home of Golf for the AIG Women’s Open in her role as a TV analyst and on the two-decade anniversary of what she labels “my life-defining moment”, the 51-year-old from Kent will attempt to avoid allowing the issue from casting a cloud over the recollections. But when there have been 12 of you who have achieved pretty much the same feat and you are the only one who has been overlooked, the sense of misjudgment must be difficult to suppress.
“It used to upset me,” Stupples says. “I can’t lie. Because it would have meant so much to members of my family, who were huge fans of the royals, and for them to have had their own flesh and blood being honoured. Well, it would have been something they could never have imagined. Unfortunately those family members are now passed. That moment has gone. It would have been more for others than it would have been for me.”
Certainly, the Stupples story is inspiring. Her father was a shift worker at Dover Port and her mother was employed at a Deal factory pressing blouses. Stupples was plainly not from money and was identified as suffering with both ADD and dyslexia growing up.
She overcame these hurdles to build a garlanded career in which she earned more than £4 million and became an established top-10 player on the LPGA Tour. Yet it was that beautiful August Sunday in 2004, in Berkshire, that stands out.
Never mind OBE, this was OMG. One off the pace beginning that final round, Stupples made an eagle on the first hole and an albatross on the second. Two par fives in five shots. Suddenly she was three ahead and without showing a hint of nerves strode out for a 64 and a five-stroke victory. “People tell me that will never happen in a final round of a major and as not many major venues start with two par-fives, they are probably right,” she says, displaying her characteristic humility.
“Yeah, I went after a fast start, but maybe not that fast. Some of my fellow players who were on other holes told me that when they saw the numbers going up on the scoreboards and they were like ‘nah, they’ve made a mistake, there – no way’. I watch it back every now and again and can’t believe that is me. Especially with the albatross.
“I knew when I hit my approach to the second that it was good. It was 222 yards with a five iron, dropped in short because there was tons of run. It was a blind shot, but the reaction from the fans said it all. Incredible. There was no danger of over-excitement because I was in the zone and never left it.
“You know, I do think about it often and with much more resonance now, because looking back I can see what it did for me. It really was life-defining. I wouldn’t have this job on the Golf Channel, if I hadn’t won that major. It would probably have been so different. I thank that moment for everything it did for me.”
Stupples retired 10 years ago and, a natural communicator, she soon found herself patrolling the fairways again, but this time with a microphone as she became a renowned on-course reporter. With her Florida residence and with her teenaged son, Logan, excelling, in her words “everything was sweet”. But there followed six months she can justifiably describe as “hell”.
“It started in January last year,” Stupples says. “Just sitting on my sofa watching TV and my resting heart-rate went to 150 [bpm] and I began shaking and had uncontrollable tremors and was quickly so weak I couldn’t climb a single stair or lift a frying pan. I honestly thought I was having heart failure and that this was it. I ended up in the emergency room three times in as many weeks and they discovered my thyroid was out of control.”
Eventually, Stupples was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease, an autoimmune condition where your antibodies attack the thyroid. The resulting medication knocked her sideways and when her eyesight became affected, she came to a courageous decision. “Your eyes bulge and turn into solid little rocks and are very painful,” she says. “There were warnings that I could go blind and having done my own research, I told them I just wanted the thyroid removed. I had to sign loads of waiver forms beforehand, recognising that the operation could go wrong, and one of my main fears was that as they had to root around my vocal cords that I could lose my voice. In my line of work, that would not be helpful! But I wanted my life back and couldn’t see how that would be possible going on like that.”
Blessedly, surgery put her on the road to recovery, although it is still not and may never be complete. “I am miles better than I was last year and feeling much more like my old self,” Stupples says. “I still have the antibodies in me that would attack my eyes, so I have to be careful and am always mindful of that. Obviously, the medication is key and I have to avoid smokey atmospheres and stressful situations. But I am grateful for what I have and that experience told me a lot. You know, you can have everything, trophies, riches, honours even – but it is how you treat others that counts.”
After this week’s Women’s Open here – “and if the weather relents then a special place could stage a special event” – Stupples will act as assistant captain to fellow major-winner Catriona Matthew (OBE) at the Curtis Cup, the amateur equivalent of the Solheim Cup between Great Britain and Ireland and the mighty Americans.
Appropriately, the venue is Sunningdale. “I’ll do whatever Catriona tells me to, as I’m so indebted to have the chance,” Stupples says. “But maybe I’ll advise the girls how to play the first couple of holes. Make a 15-footer for an eagle and then hole your second on the next and you don’t need to putt. Nothing to it, really.”