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This week the British golf season gets underway in its traditional manner when the Sunningdale Foursomes is played over the revered Old and New courses at the famous Surrey club.
It is an annual ritual which was started back in 1934, when former British and English women’s champion Diana Fishwick and her partner Noel Layton from Walton Heath won the inaugural contest, and it has lost little of its lustre in the intervening years.
A glance at the list of its past champions says much about the standing of the tournament. In its early days, leading professionals Max Faulkner, Peter Alliss, Neil Coles, Brian Huggett, Alf Padgham and Dai Rees all claimed the title as did top amateurs like Fishwick, Joyce Wethered, Jess Donald and Michael Bonallack. More recently, Sam Torrance, Ronan Rafferty, Carl Mason, Ross Fisher and Luke Donald have won the coveted trophy too.
The fact the Sunningdale Foursomes offers amateurs the chance to compete against the professionals sets it apart from the vast majority of other events and so does the decision, taken right at the outset, that it should be open to both men and women. Nowadays, mixed events like the Vic Open in Australia are heralded by many as being the way forward so it is worth remembering that at the Sunningdale Foursomes they have been championing that cause for 86 years.
Each year, the event’s unique handicap system, in which male professionals play off plus 1, male amateurs play off scratch, women professionals play off 2 and women amateurs are allocated four shots, causes some debate but, with all competitors playing off the same tees, it works rather well except in those rare instances like last year when two world-class women amateurs, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Maja Stark, teamed up together and received eight shots. That proved too much for all their opponents, with the pair going on to beat teenaged English amateur Joe Sullivan and his pro partner Louis Hirst in the final to become just the fifth all-female pairing to lift the trophy.
Grant and Stark are now at college in the United States so will not be defending their title but there is still much to look forward to for the small but committed group of aficionados who attend the event year after year.
Sandy Lyle makes a welcome return, partnered by James Bunch, 45 years after he and Martin Poxon reached the last day only to see the competition abandoned because of snow. Solheim Cup star Charley Hull teams up with Challenge Tour professional Ryan Evans, while former Ryder Cup player Rafferty plays with his son, Jonathan, and another European Tour veteran, Robert Lee, joins forces with his fellow Sky Sports commentator, Inci Mehmet.
The leading amateur in the field is world No. 20 Lily May Humphreys, who is partnered by professional Will Percival from Orsett, but top billing this year must go to two Solheim Cup veterans who are playing together for the first time in the event.
A few years ago, Dame Laura Davies teamed with Barry Lane but this time she has reprised her old partnership with another Ladies European Tour veteran, Trish Johnson.
The two English women played nine times together in the Solheim Cup, including a four-ball match at St Pierre in 1996 when they beat Kelly Robbins and Pat Bradley by a joint record 8-and-7 margin. Twenty-four years on, their first-round opponents at Sunningdale are Scottish LET player Heather MacRae, who last year returned to playing after cancer surgery, and her compatriot and good friend, former European Tour member Craig Lee.
It is exactly the sort of matchup that makes the Sunningdale Foursomes such an intriguing event to watch.
Stark, the 2019 Sunningdale Foursomes winner, has wasted no time making a name for herself on the US collegiate circuit.
In just her second appearance in Oklahoma State colours, the 20-year-old world No. 12 carded rounds of 67, 75 and 73 to share medallist honours with Michigan’s Ashley Kim in the Hurricane Invitational at the Biltmore Golf Course in Coral Gables, Florida. The victory came ahead of her second start in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which begins April 1. Her Sunningdale Foursomes partner Grant also is in the field for that event.
There was also more good news for Swedish golf when LSU’s Ingrid Lindblad put together rounds of 71, 72 and 69 to finish a single shot ahead of compatriot Beatrice Wallin at the Florida State Match Up over the Nicklaus course at Bay Point Golf Club in Florida. England’s Caitlin Evans-Brand (Coastal Carolina) was third, a further shot behind.
The victory was Lindblad’s second during her freshman season in the United States and helped LSU to claim its third team title of the campaign.
Stanford freshman Barclay Brown narrowly missed out on collecting his first individual collegiate title in the Cabo Collegiate at the Cabo del Sol Ocean course in Los Cabos, Mexico.
The English international, who plays out of the Hallamshire club in Yorkshire where the Fitzpatrick brothers, Matt and Alex, also are members, fired rounds of 71, 64 and 71 to finish in a share of second place, a stroke behind Texas A&M’s Walker Lee on 7-under-par 206. Fellow Englishman Jamie Li (Florida State) was tied for fourth in the same event.
“It was great to see Barclay have a really fine week,” said Stanford’s director of men’s golf, Conrad Ray. “The conditions were very tough on the back nine yesterday, as well as today.”
Brown’s second place in Mexico comes hard on the heels of a finishing third in the Prestige Individual Invitational at Coral Mountain Golf Club in La Quinta, California, where he shot a 65 in the second round.
Irish golf fans will be able to watch at least two of their country’s best amateurs in action when this year’s Arnold Palmer Cup gets underway at Lahinch on July 3.
That was confirmed when both Olivia Mehaffey (Arizona State) and Caolan Rafferty (Maynooth) were listed among the six committee selections for the annual intercollegiate international match between the United States and the Internationals.
The two Irish players were named alongside Sweden’s Lindblad (LSU), her compatriot Ludvig Åberg (Texas Tech), French world No. 1 Pauline Roussin-Bouchard (South Carolina) and Germany’s Matthias Schmid (Louisville). Mehaffey and Schmid will be making their second appearance in the contest.
The good news for Irish fans is that there could well be another Irish player in the International team because Mark Power (Wake Forest) currently tops the latest men’s ranking ahead of (in order) France’s Adrien Pendariès (Duke), China’s Lin Yuxin (Southern California), Canada’s Matthew Anderson (San Francisco), Spain’s David Puig Corrius (Arizona State), Australia’s Jack Trent (UNLV), England’s Angus Flanagan (Minnesota), South Korea’s Sam Choi (New Mexico), England’s Alex Fitzpatrick (Wake Forest) and Japan’s Leo Oyo (San Diego State).
The current women’s International ranking is led by China’s Sophie Guo (Texas) followed by Chinese Taipei’s Vivian Hou (Arizona), Sweden’s Linn Grant (Arizona State), Austria’s Emma Spitz (UCLA), Germany’s Aline Krauter (Stanford), Paraguay’s Sofía García (Texas Tech), Sweden’s Stark (Oklahoma State), Taiwan’s Yu-Sang Hou (Arizona), China’s Angelina Ye (Stanford) and Thailand’s Jaravee Boonchant (Duke).
The top six players on both rankings will earn automatic spots on the International team when the qualifying process concludes on March 25 with the team being augmented by the winners of the R&A Student Tour Series Final on April 7 and four further committee/coaches picks.
“I am thrilled that Ireland has both a male and female representative on the team,” said Barry Fennelly, Maynooth University’s golf team manager, who was named as the International team’s assistant men’s coach earlier this year.
“From a Maynooth perspective, I’m personally thrilled to have a representative on the International side. Caolan has proved that he is a world-class player through his rise in the world amateur golf rankings in recent years and I’m delighted he’s getting rewarded with this opportunity.”
The Bonallack Trophy and the Patsy Hankins Trophy have become the latest amateur events to fall victim of the escalating coronavirus outbreak.
The biennial matches, which pit the leading men and women amateurs from Europe against their counterparts from the Asia-Pacific, were scheduled to be played at the La Manga Club in Spain on April 23-25 but have been scrapped because of the ongoing crisis.
“I am really sorry to see the cancellation of this event but the safety and well-being of our players, officials, and the anxiety of the parents, we agreed to let it go for this year,” said Asia Pacific Golf Confederation chairman, Taimur Hassan Amin from Pakistan.
Thanks to a change to the scheduling, the next Bonallack Trophy and Patsy Hankins Trophy will be played at the end of July 2021 at a venue still to be announced.
The cancellation of the two matches follows the postponement of Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific, the Queen Sirikit Cup (Asia-Pacific Amateur Ladies Golf Team Championship) plus several professional events in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Scotland’s Ryan Lumsden has become the latest rookie British professional to secure a victory on the MENA Tour.
The 23-year-old Lumsden, a graduate from Northwestern University in Illinois who turned pro shortly after representing his country at last autumn’s Home Internationals, looked to be cruising to victory at the Journey to Jordan 2 event at Ayla before carding a double bogey on his final hole. However, his 2-under-par 70 was still enough for him to finish a stroke ahead of Englishman Curtis Knipes on 8-under-par 208.
He joins former English internationals David Langley, Bailey Gill and David Hague in claiming their maiden professional victories on this year’s MENA Tour, but they will all have to wait a while to build on those successes because on the day after the conclusion of the Journey to Jordan 2 event the MENA Tour announced the postponement the final six tournaments on its 2020 schedule until later this year due to coronavirus concerns.
Lumsden’s win was worth $13,500 and moves him into third place on the tour’s money list behind Langley and Hague.
Irish International Steven Graham carded rounds of 67, 66 and 71 to win the Spanish International Senior Amateur Championship at Melia Villaitana Golf in Alicante.
Graham’s 12-under-par total was enough for him to finish three shots in front of Spain’s Jacobo Cestino Castilla with England’s Alan Mew and Scotland’s Robert Jenkins a further four shots back in a tie for third place.
Earlier in the week 2017 individual champion Jenkins, from Royal Troon, teamed up with England’s Gareth Bradley to win the Spanish Seniors Doubles Championship staged over the same course. They combined to shoot a 68 and a 67 to finish two shots in front of Spaniards Ramón Luengo Martínez and Ramón Peláez Fernández. Irish duo Peter Sheehan and Karl Bornemann were third a single shot further behind.
England Golf has named six members of its Boys’ squad as their representatives for next month’s French International Boys’ Championship at Les Aisses Golf Club, near Orléans in the Loire Valley.
Cheshire’s Oscar Doran (Delamere Forest) and Remy Miller (Prestbury), Hertfordshire duo Max Hopkins (Bishops Stortford) and Jack Bigham (Harpenden) will be joined by Yorkshire’s Josh Berry (Doncaster) and Devon’s Craig Passmore (Torquay).
The format for the championship features players competing both on an individual and team basis. The main individual event, for the Michel Carlhian Trophy, starts with a 36-hole stroke-play qualifier, with the leading 32 competitors moving on to match play. There is also a secondary event, for the Pierre Massie Trophy, for boys 14 and younger who do not qualify for match play. The 14-year-old Berry is the only English team member who qualifies for this event.
In addition, there is also a Nations Cup, for teams of three players, held in conjunction with the stroke-play qualifier. Hopkins, Berry and Passmore will be on one team with Bigham, Miller and Doran on the other.
Top: Trish Johnson and Dame Laura Davies
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