On ReflectIOn
Top: Lydia Ko Above: Ai Miyazato
‘The Smyth Salver’, the prize for the top amateur. With a very strong amateur field in the tournament including some of the victorious Curtis Cuppers and the record- breaking LPGA tournament winner, Lydia Ko, it certainly had the attention of the knowledgeable crowd. Britain’s Holly Clyburn and Bronte Law (both on the winning Curtis Cup team) were indeed the closest challengers to Lydia Ko, but Ko triumphed in the end by 2 shots. In the press conference afterwards I was staggered at how self-assured Ko appeared. She spoke with the poise of someone at least 10 years her senior and spoke intelligently and thoughtfully about the impact of her performance and the role the event could play in her learning curve. I may be reading more into it than I should but I noticed that, having asked her a question about how much she liked the course and getting an understandably lukewarm answer given the conditions, she glanced at the Hoylake logo on my shirt and corrected herself, highlighting her respect for the historic links. A very slick performance on and off the course.
I thought I would take a couple of days after the event before looking back a little more clearly on the week. H I think we hosted a great tournament that yielded a great champion. H The links looked fantastic on television. Judging by the traffic on the Club website, we had a lot of people watching on TV and surfing the website on their ‘second screen’ ... a recent phenomenon. We also encouraged a high proportion of people to consider booking a tee time so that they can take on the Hoylake challenge themselves. We had interest on the online booking site from over 35 countries, with four times the normal number of firm enquiries. In particular it was great to see the USA and Japan feature in the top three countries, suggesting some future tourism for Hoylake village. Facebook and Twitter were absolutely buzzing – Facebook alone reached 36,000 people across the week. After launching our new site just in time for the event and using social media during tournament play for the first time, this was very satisfying H The overall attendance was 44,000. Considering that we lost a day when play was abandoned, and that the final day was very wet and windy, this showed fantastic commitment from the spectators near and far. So many thanks to them. H The question on many people’s lips was whether the event would come back again. The organisers IMG were quoted as saying: “The golf club and the council were great and it all came together well. We would love to come back, though I’ve no idea when. It won’t be for a couple of years and we’re back in Scotland in 2015. We have some ideas for 2016 and beyond that we have not made a decision. It will be another 12 months before we think about that, but we would love Hoylake to feature in our plans. We would absolutely love to come back if the club would have us. We are really happy with it.” So it could be a few years that we have to wait, but it will be worth it. Next time
we will be back on the July schedule and perhaps we would see a repeat of the very different 2006 conditions. The thought I had on my mind was whether we saw a future winner in 15-year-
old Lydia Ko. Who knows, she may still be a teenager when the event returns! n
ROYAL LIVERPOOL GOLF CLUB 2013 MAGAZINE
13
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