Valentine Delon
Ross Parker, R&A via Getty Images
NORTH BERWICK, SCOTLAND | Scottie Scheffler and Valentine Delon, the 21-year-old French player who defeated Spain’s Andrea Revuelta by 2 and 1 to win the British Women’s Amateur championship at Muirfield, have something in common. Where Scheffler describes the shuffling of the left foot as a natural part of his game, Delon’s is down to the scoliosis she has suffered.
It does nothing to stop the lovely flow of her swing; it’s just that her left foot takes a left turn on the follow-through because of her recent bout of back surgery. “Her back doesn’t allow her to keep it still,” explained her father.
And what a proud father he was as his daughter, who is ranked 66th on the WAGR list because of the limited amount of golf she has been able to play, succeeded in keeping her calm. Revuelta, who is ranked fourth on the list, found it more of a struggle, probably because of the pressure of a crazy wind and how she was expected to win.
It was Delon’s father who, years ago, had told his daughter all about Stacy Lewis, the 2013 winner of the British Open at St Andrews, and how she had fought her scoliosis over the years.
What a difference it has made to Valentine. She now wants to do as Lewis in helping others: “Since I'm playing golf again, I just want to show everyone that even if something happens in your life, everything is possible. I think I showed it today by winning this tournament.”
For another major champion who has given her nothing but encouragement, what of the legendary Catherine Lacoste who has a house round the corner from the Delon family in Chantilly, the course which was founded by Lacoste’s grandfather.
Players came from 33 different lands to play last week, and what came as something of a surprise was how, when it came to the quarterfinals, the Continentals boasted as many as six of the eight players. Namely, two Spanish, two French, one Belgian and a Swede, with the remaining two Americans.
The compelling silence on the opening days was entirely understandable. It was serious stuff, though Muirfield could not have done more to make the players and their families feel at home.
Understandably, there was a wistful mix of smiles and sadness as players lost or won in the match-play stages, with nothing more touching than when Paula Martin Sampedro, last year’s winner at Nairn, bowed out at the 19th in her first round against the tiny Canadian, Ann-Sophie Bourgault. Sampedro’s father had his arm around his daughter as she headed back to the clubhouse, while Bourgault's father was handing his daughter his phone. “It’s your mother,” he said, “She’s just stepped off her plane and you might want to tell her that you’ve just won.”
At the start of the week, Farah O’Keefe, who had lost to Sampedro in the final at Nairn, had said that she was intent of going one step further than last year and, right through to the semi-finals, it looked as if she had done more than enough in the intervening months to make that happen. Apart from winning the NCAA and collecting a record five points out of five in this year’s Curtis Cup, she had upped her fitness levels, and tidied her short game.
If there is anything which can assuage her disappointment, it will be the thought of her final year at the University of Texas. She wants to help it win what would be their first Division 1 team NCAAs. “I can play golf forever but this will be the last year when I can do it for my college,” O’Keefe said.
How well O’Keefe went down at Muirfield. “I’m a golf nut,” she explained. “I looked at my table-mat at breakfast this morning and, when I saw the year 1744 written at the foot of it, I couldn’t believe that the Hon Company of Edinburgh Golfers is … older than America.” In reeling off a bit of the club’s history, this splendid character included the goings-on of 2016 when there had to be a second ballot at Muirfield after their members voted against taking women. What prompted a few smiles was that it was as if she were seeing it as just one more great event in Scotland’s mingled history.
You want golfers good and bad to talk the same game and, inevitably, the men of Muirfield, who do not live in the WAGR world, wanted ‘to talk handicaps’ to the competitors. (As, indeed, do most people in this part of the world.)
However, when Farah told a couple of friendly gentlemen that hers was a startling “plus seven and on the verge of plus eight,” they couldn’t get to grips with that either.
Lewine Mair
