Hoylake looks forward to
The 2009 Women’s British Open Champion Catriona Matthew will be sure of a warm welcome by the crowds when the world’s top women golfers return to Royal Liverpool in July 2012. Many will recall the fantastic performance by the young Catriona Lambert, as she was known in 1992, scoring the most points for the British and Irish team when the Curtis Cup was staged at Hoylake. The 22 year old Scot lost only one foursomes match in all her games in one of GB’s all too few victories over the Americans by 10 points to 8. Catriona’s victory in
the Women’s British Open in 2009, at Royal Lytham & St Annes, was the first for a Scot in the tournament and her first major. Her triumph at the age of 39 by three shots over former three times winner Australian Karrie Webb was all the more remarkable having given birth to
her second child eleven weeks before the championship. The inaugural tournament, then named the Ladies’ British
Open, was played at Fulford in Yorkshire in 1976. At a time when the Women’s professional game had just started in Britain, the amateur Jenny Lee-Smith from Northumberland won the Championship. British players dominated the early years but South African’s Alison Sheard was the first overseas winner in 1979, followed by America’s Debbie Massey in
return of Curtis Cup Heroine
By Helen Heggarty.
GB&I Curtis Cup Team at Hoylake 1992
1980 and ’81. In 1984 the winner came from Japan when Ayako Okamoto won by a record eleven strokes and the event had become truly international. Other British winners have been Laura Davies, Alison Nicholas and Penny Grice- Whittaker, but in the last two decades only one other British player, Karen Stupples, had won the title before Catriona’s triumph last year. The Ricoh Women’s British Open, the only major staged outside the USA, can be expected to attract the best players from around the world and enjoy large crowds. The 2009 field boasted players from 25 different nations and included every player inside the world’s top 30. This is the first time
the Women’s British Open will have been played at Hoylake, but the course is no stranger to women’s tournaments having hosted the British Open Ladies’ Amateur
Championship in 1896 and 1921. More recently, the English Ladies’ Championship was staged over the links in 1971 and 1979 followed by the return of the British Open Amateur Ladies’ in 1989 and 1996. The Curtis Cup in 1992 proved to be hugely popular, attracting large crowds. The welcome news of the best women golfers returning to Hoylake will no doubt see the many supporters of the women’s game hoping for a British victory once more!
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