NAIRN, SCOTLAND | Two of the world’s leading amateurs sent the R&A advance word that they would be pulling out of the Women’s Amateur Championship.
England’s Lottie Woad, currently No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, said that she had been playing in one event after another and was in dire need of some rest ahead of the Vagliano Trophy, which pits Great Britain and Ireland versus the Continent of Europe.
Meanwhile Asterisk Talley, the 16-year-old American phenom ranked 16th in the world, sent news of a broken toe.
GGP expected the medical team on duty at the Women’s Amateur to heap praise on the players’ fitness levels. That, though, was not quite the case.
“There are definite areas where there’s room for improvement,” said Dr. Angela Duncan from the Scottish Institute for Sport.
Duncan and Orlaith Buckley, the Irish physiotherapist who works with everyone from amateurs to the Legend Tour’s over-50s, decided that only 25 percent of the field at Nairn were as good as it gets on the fitness front, mostly thanks to the programmes they are given at their American universities.
Another quarter of the field – they were younger than the top group – were on the way to making the best of themselves. But rest had work to do.
Resistance training is the big thing for those looking to hit a longer ball – and it can work for everyone.
Here, Buckley provided a perfect illustration when she picked out South Africa’s 50-year-old Darren Fichardt. He lost his DP World Tour card, but no sooner had he joined the Legends and joined in with the health programmes made available on that tour than he won his DP World Tour card back.
Buckley added that it’s never too late for a golfer to start work on his or her strength: “If you’re above the grass, get stuck in,” she urged.
A thumping racket was coming from the R&A’s tented base last Friday night. People are well aware of the extent to which the governing body are moving with the times but this was more than somewhat startling.
As it turned out, the R&A officials had given a section of their tenting over to a players’ gym, where it was a moot point as to whether the players’ choice of music – at least on the evening in question – was louder than the noise they were making themselves. (Rory McIlroy, following his recent fallout with the media, would have given a bemused nod at the news that the press were struggling to work next door.)
The above told its own story of the age of today’s competitors.
Where America’s Carol Semple Thompson was still competing in the Curtis Cup at 52, the oldest competitor at Nairn was 28 and the youngest 16.
Away from the noise issue, officials agreed that the players of today are more courteous than they have ever been. “In the past,” said one, “they couldn’t wait to escape the scorer’s hut if they’d had a bad day. Today, they’re very polite, very patient.”
The players loved the links and they loved the climate. Nairn is said to have more hours of sunshine than anywhere else in the UK and, for the most part, last week’s conditions suggested that that had to be true. For an unexpected addendum, a local farmer who has kept charts all his days said that August was the wettest month of the year.
Overall, the R&A were satisfied with the pace of play. But the 4 hours, 27 minutes allowed for the stroke-play rounds was not enough for some.
Twenty warnings were given out along with one bad time. As a result, rounds ranged from 4:08 to 4:51.
There was further news on Thursday when Marie Eline Madsen, who had already received one warning during her record 66 in the stroke play, was given another in her match against Noa van Beck. It did her no harm; she reacted with three birdies in a row.
Though Americans have seldom been regular visitors to the Women’s Amateur, a string of them arrived for the ’25 instalment, presumably in a bid to match Melanie Green’s efforts at Portmarnock in ’24.
For the record, the then 22-year-old Green, who hails from Medina, New York, and is now playing on the Epson Tour, came back from 4 down after nine holes against Scotland’s Lorna McClymont to make off with the trophy.
It’s always interesting to see what wins a crowd over and, in Green’s case, it was for rather more than her easy mastery of Portmarnock. Firstly, she had a smile for everyone, with special reference to the marshal in charge of the first tee. He welcomed her back on a daily basis, with his Sunday special a delighted, “So you’re still here!”
Secondly, she was tickled at how she was getting more admiration than pity for carrying her own clubs. (She afterwards explained that she was a bit short of cash.)
There were two proudly placed plaques in the professionals’ shop at Nairn showing results of the 1999 Walker Cup and 2012 Curtis Cup.
With the Walker Cup men of ’99 having lost 32 of the previous 36 matches, Peter McEvoy, at one point the No. 1 amateur in the world and the GB&I captain, made it his business to work on the expectation levels of his players.
Little by little, he conned them into believing that they were not the underdogs – and to all-round disbelief, he made it work.
With Luke Donald, the present European Ryder Cup captain, among McEvoy’s charges, the result was a resounding 15-9.
Tegwen Matthews, the GB&I Curtis Cup captain, had her own set of problems. Her side came to Nairn having lost seven matches in a row, while the situation looked even more grim when the then 16-year-old Charley Hull had to be left out of the opening foursomes because she didn’t know what foursomes were all about. (Her knowledge of four-balls was not that great either at that point.)
The Americans won each of the three opening matches and it was only after Matthews had given her team “a frank and honest talk about their schoolboy errors” that they started pulling themselves together.
They were trailing by a point going into the singles where, with Hull back in her comfort zone, they ended up with a 10½-9½ victory.
At the end of last week, Hugh Sutherland, the club’s archivist, was understandably proud to tell Mark Darbon, the CEO of the R&A, that Nairn is the only club in these islands to have hosted winning Walker and Curtis cups.
Apparently, both of the above played an amazing part in the development of Nairn’s juniors.
Today, the club have 39 girls and 146 boys, with the younger editions to be seen swarming over the nine-hole Cameron course last Monday.
Everyone in Nairn is bursting to tell you how Jen Abbott, who has been working with the youngsters for the last 28 years, is the person behind the “Nairn Eagles.” Indeed, when Calum Scott, who had been in her boys’ squad, won the Silver Medal as low amateur at last year’s Open, the first thing he did was to insist on having his picture taken with her.
Abbott, who is helped in her role by Murray Urquhart, who played in the 2005 Open at St Andrews, has her own set of rules for juniors, with GGP’s favourite the one pertaining to hats.
“Hats are not allowed in the clubhouse and must come off from the moment the golfers shake hands with a playing companion on the 18th green,” Abbott explained.
Lewine Mair