The annual Varsity Match, contested by English universities Oxford and Cambridge and first played on Wimbledon Common in 1878, has never featured a female captain. But all that will change when the next edition is held at Royal North Devon Golf Club on 28-29 March 2025.
The captain in question is 25-year-old Chloe Royston, who was born and brought up in South Africa before heading to Harvard University in the U.S. and from there to Cambridge, where she has just completed a master’s in biotechnology. Now, she is staying put to add a doctorate to her qualifications.
A type 1 diabetic, Royston played in the Varsity Match in 2023 and ’24 and, for the purposes of the latter edition, she was like all the would-be Varsity men in taking part in a medal-play sift from which the top two would emerge with automatic team places. She finished joint first after handing in a 75 from the back tees at Rye Golf Club.
In the match itself, which went Oxford’s way, she won her foursomes and, after being five holes to the bad in the singles, came back to salvage a half.
Does this winner of two events on the South African women’s amateur circuit last year ever sense the men find it stressful to have a woman as an opponent? She has suspected from time to time they are “not massively happy,” but no one has ever said as much to her.
Royston had been heading toward a swimming scholarship at Harvard when the medical men decided swimming was not the best of ideas for someone with her condition, largely because of the likelihood of ear infections. Her brother, Greg, who had been to Harvard ahead of her and was the Ivy League Player of the Year in 2017, helped her to switch from swimming to golf. Kevin Rhoads, Harvard’s golf coach, was soon marvelling at her skills.
“She’s fearless,” Rhoads said. “Basically, she just sets her mind on stuff.”
There were no objections when Royston was chosen to be the Cambridge captain for Royal North Devon. She had wondered whether there would be anything in the way of negativity when she was given her new role, but from the start, she felt nothing but good will.
“Everyone’s been wonderful,” she said. “I feel so honoured.”
“Little by little, things have changed, and Chloe is making the best of her opportunities. She’s doing so well.”
Fiona Edmond
All of which was very different to what happened when Fiona Edmond, a former English and GB&I international, became the first woman to play in the Cambridge Varsity side in 1986 and again in ’87. (Oxford waited until 2021 for its first woman, Emma Sand, a visiting student from California.)
“So many people disapproved of me,” Edmond said. “In my first match, there were a couple of elderly past Blues who did their level best to put me off. They followed me ’round and were tut-tutting all the way. Things became very unpleasant. I was only 17 at the time, but I was so determined to win a Blue for myself that I made a pretty good job of ignoring them.”
When GGP asked Edmond if there would have been any chance of her becoming the Cambridge captain, she let rip with a disbelieving chuckle. She promptly recalled how, every time the teams of ’86 and ’87 were arranging their weekend club fixtures, the captain would have to drop a line to his opposite number at whatever club it was and explain that Cambridge had a woman in its side. Several of the clubs were male-only, and though most of them came to the decision that such a departure from the norm could be arranged, there was one club in the Midlands which would not hear of it.
“Just imagine,” Edmond said, “if Chloe had to write to the different clubs today and ask if it was all right for her to play in the team she would be captaining.
In 2023, Royston had thought of turning professional at the end of her master’s, but when Cambridge offered her the chance to pursue a doctorate centring around her level of diabetes, she decided it was too good an opportunity to miss.
What eventually made up her mind was a) how much she loves Cambridge; and b) how she expects to learn more about managing her own condition besides having the chance to play a role in helping to make things easier for children who have been given an early diagnosis.
Turning professional at 28 is still a possibility. After all, though she appreciates she could have progressed more quickly with her golf had she been playing on the LET or LPGA, she knows that playing alongside the men of Cambridge can be only a good thing.
She is hitting her drives farther than she ever did and, though not in the top half of the Varsity team when it comes to length, she is some way removed from being the shortest hitter. Length apart, she finds that her play on and around the green is becoming sharper all the time.
In her captaincy role, Royston is the decision-maker and, in what would surely have prompted the old fogeys of Edmond’s day to give a grudging nod of approval, she says she usually will talk through her ideas with one of the men.
“It’s when it comes to the final call,” she said, “that it’s up to me; I do it alone.”
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Harvard golf coach Kevin Rhoads calls Chloe Royston "fearless."
DAVID CANNON, GETTY IMAGES