Stoke by Nayland’s Lily May Humphreys is on course to retain her England Women’s Amateur Championship crown after winning her quarter-final against Cheshure’s Bel Wardle at North Devon’s Saunton Golf Club. Picture by LEADERBOARD PHOTOGRAPHY
ESSEX international Lily May Humphreys continued her quest for her third title in three weeks when she played her way into the semi-finals of the English Women’s Amateur at Saunton, on Saturday.
Humphreys, who has already won Welsh and Irish strokeplay titles this month, will play Northumberland’s Jess Baker in North Devon, this morning (Sunday).
The other semi-final will be between Hertfordshire’s Ellen Hume and Staffordshire’s Emily Brennan, who edged into the championship match play via a preliminary round.
Humphreys, from Stoke by Nayland, Essex, was first to claim her place in the semis, with a 4&3 win over England team-mate Bel Wardle, from Prestbury GC, having earlier beaten Bishop’s Stortford’s Rebecca Earl, the other Hertfordshire player to reach the last 16.
The quarter-final clash against Wardle was a game many would have fancied as a final, bringing together the two highest ranked players in the field, with Humphreys currently 31st in the world, while Wardle is 37th.
They played brisk, good quality golf, with Humphreys always ahead and holding tight to her advantage when necessary; for example on the 10th where she holed a 20-footer for a half and rewarded herself with a fist pump.
Humphreys, who played the 14 holes in level par, said: “This was a big match and I knew it would be tough. It’s good to beat Bel, she’s a very good player, very solid and she doesn’t usually give anything away, you have to take it for yourself.
“I haven’t shot over par this week, which is good round here,” added the 17-year-old, who previously won the English Women’s Amateur Championship in 2017.
Now she faces 16-year-old Jess Baker, from Northumberland’s Gosforth Park Ladies. She beat Gloucestershire’s Caley McGinty on Saturday morning and followed up by beating Lincolnshire’s Billie-Jo Smith 2&1.
Baker went ahead in the afternoon with a birdie on the third and stayed in front with sub-par golf in a close match. Smith had a putt to take the game to the 18th but was denied when the ball looked in the hole but rimmed out again.
“We had a great match and it could have gone either way,” said Baker, who is enjoying herself hugely. “This course is really tough and to be part of this and in contention is a massive thing.”
Mill Green’s Ellen Hume put herself in the spotlight on Friday when she beat the defending champion and she continued in the same vein in the second and third rounds.
She defeated Thalia Martin (Peterborough Milton) in the second round and followed up with a 3&2 win over Cornwall’s England international Emily Toy, from Carlyon Bay, in the quarter-final.
Having reached the last eight, Hume had to wait until the 12th before she finally got ahead in the game. But once there, she stayed there.
“I birdied the 12th which gave me a bit of momentum and also won the 13th,” said Hume. “Emily won the 14th with a good par but then I made two pars to win.
“I didn’t expect any of this coming into the event, but I’m extremely thrilled with the results. Anything else now is a bonus.”
She will play Trentham’s Emily Brennan, who has swept all before her since edging her way into the match play.
“Qualifying was shocking!” the Staffordshire ace laughed. “But match play is a totally different game and I’m playing pretty well.”
In the second round she knocked out Huddersfield’s England junior international Charlotte Heath, and in the quarter-finals she scored a 19th hole win over Whitley Bay’s Rosie Belsham, recent winner of the Fairhaven Trophy by a record score.
After a very scrappy start on the first, Brennan and Belsham settled into a terrific battle. Belsham rammed home a birdie putt on 18 to take the game into extra time, but the Northumberland player’s par on the next put paid to her challenge.
“Apart from the first we played pretty solid and it went back and forth. If I made a mistake Rosie snatched it and vice versa,” said Brennan.
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