The 61st Berkhamsted Trophy, which attracted a record entry after it was opened up to female and male golfers, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Picture by ANDY HISEMAN / MAGIC HOUR MEDIA

BERKHAMSTED Golf Club has confirmed the postponement of the 61^st Berkhamsted Trophy because of the coronavirus outbreak.

But the Hertfordshire heatthland club – famous for having no bunkers – plans to stage the ground-breaking event for sexual equality later this year.

The 72-hole tournament was set to be the world’s first national-level elite amateur golf event open to both males and females, from April 2-4.

Following the club’s announcement in January that golfers from both sexes would be able to compete equally, this year’s event had already attracted an all-time record entry.

Among the 142 competitors who have entered the 2020 tournament are 18 leading women golfers – led by last week’s Sunningdale Foursomes winner Lily-May Humphries, from Essex, Cheshire’s England international Isobel Wardle, and Emily Toy, the reigning Women’s Amateur Champion. from Cornwall.

All three are members of the Curtis Cup squad for the biennial match, between Great Britain and Ireland and the USA, which is due to be played at Conwy GC, in North Wales, from June 12-14.

The Hertfordshire club is looking to re-schedule the 61^st Berkhamsted Trophy in the autumn 2020. Further announcements will follow. Entrants need to do nothing at this stage.

The Berkhamsted Trophy. Picture by ANDY HISEMAN

Berkhamsted manager Howard Craft said: “Naturally we would rather not be doing this, but it is clearly unwise to attempt to stage a golf tournament of this kind at the moment.

“The health of our competitors, members and staff is the overwhelming priority right now.

“Our decision in January to invite leading female amateur golfers to enter the tournament has been emphatically validated by the record-breaking entry levels, and also by the high quality of the golfers who want to compete – of both sexes.

“What’s been achieved so far is testament both to the appeal of the Berkhamsted Trophy, and also to the growing desire to stage truly gender-neutral tournaments across the golfing world.

“We are proud to be among those who are leading the way in this area, and we are still excited to see what happens when the best female golfers take on the best male golfers, later this year, all competing for the same trophy.”

Great Britain & Ireland Curtis Cup captain Elaine Ratcliffe said: “Berkhamsted has clearly taken the right decision to postpone for now, but more importantly, I think it’s brilliant the event received such enthusiastic backing from both male and female competitors.

“It’s another step in the right direction not just for golf, but for sport in general,” said Ratcliffe, the former Ladies European Tour player, who played in the 1996 Curtis Cup at Killarney, and also for GB&I at the 1998 World Amateur Team Championship for the Espirito Trophy.

“They are all athletes at the end of the day, and we are gradually removing those dividing lines between men’s and women’s sport.”

The 2019 Berkhamsted Trophy was won by Ryan Gosling, from Harpenden GC.

Past winners include Sandy Lyle, Luke Donald, Andy Sullivan, Tom Lewis, Graeme Storm, and Jack Singh-Brar, who have all gone on to play on the European Tour, plus amateur legend Gary Wolstenholme.

•Berkhamsted’s golf course remains open to its members after the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance told the Commons Health Committee this week that playing golf was relatively safe during the restrictions on social isolation advised after the COVID-19 outbreak continued to spread across the UK this week.

Berkhamsted Golf Club general manager Howard Craft. Picture by ANDY HISEMAN

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The 2018 Great Britain and Ireland team that were soundly beaten at New York’s Quaker Ridge in 2018, including Surrey’s Annabell Fuller and Essex’s Lily May Humphreys.
Picture by THE R&A / GETTY IMAGES

TEN players have been named in The R&A”s initial Great Britain and Ireland squad for the 2020 Curtis Cup, which will be played at Wales’ Conwy Golf Club in June.

The GB&I will be attempting to regain the historic trophy after the United States recorded a commanding 17-3 victory at Quaker Ridge in New York last year.

The 41st Curtis Cup match will be played from Friday, June 12 til Sunday June 14 at the North Wales course on the Morfa Peninsula, overlooking the Conwy estuary.

Elaine Ratcliffe, who will captain GB&I in the Curtis Cup for the first time, said: “We have a strong pool of players to choose from throughout GB&I and I’m delighted with the 10 players we have selected for the initial squad.

“Each player’s performance and results will be monitored closely over the coming months and we will be looking for each of them to maintain a high standard as they try to secure their places in the team.

“There are many other talented players who can be added to this squad over the next few months,” said the former Ladies European Tour player, who won the English Ladies Amateur Championship in 1998, and hails from Sandbach, in Cheshire.

“We will be following performances closely before the Curtis Cup team is announced in May,” added Ratcliffe, who is one of the co-owners of Essendon Golf Club, in Hertfordshire.

Royal County Down’s Olivia Mehaffey, the highest-ranked member of the squad at No. 19 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, is aiming to make her third Curtis Cup appearance.

Having made her debut in 2016, where she secured three-and-a-half points for the victorious GB&I team, Mehaffey was also a stand-out player in last year’s tough defeat at the 2018 Curtis Cup.

The Northern Ireland international helped achieve two-and-a-half of the team’s three-point total. Currently attending Arizona State University – the university where Phil Mickelson and Paul Casey played – Mehaffey has recorded three collegiate wins this year.

Also in contention for the 2020 team are three of Mehaffey’s team mates from 2018 – Shannon McWilliam, Annabell Fuller and Lily May Humphreys.

The latter has enjoyed an excellent 2019, winning the Annika Invitational Europe, Irish Women’s Open and Welsh Ladies’ Open Strokeplay championships.

Cornwall’s Emily Toy, the 2019 Women’s Amateur Champion and an R&A Foundation scholar, is the third of four English players named in the initial squad and is hoping to make her Curtis Cup debut in 2020.

The squad features a further five potential debutants including Hannah Darling, the Scottish Girls’ Open champion, Annabel Wilson, the Irish Women’s Close champion, Hazel MacGarvie, and Julie McCarthy.

Cheshire’s Isobel Wardle – recently crowned the English Women’s County Champion of Champions at Woodhall Spa – is the final England player in the provisional squad.

The Prestbury GC member helped England win the Women’s Home Internationals at Downfield, in Scotland, last month, alongside Humphreys and Toy.

The final eight players for the GB&I team will be announced on May 11, 2020, and will include the two golfers who are placed highest in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in the week prior.

A further six players will be selected by The R&A Women’s selection committee. Up to four non-travelling reserves will also be announced.

The links course overlooking the Caenarvonshire coast is one of the best in Wales and has hosted the 2009 European Amateur Team Chamiopnship, as well as the Ryder Cup Wales Senior Open on the European Seniors Tour in 2007.

It was also used for Final Qualifying for the 2006 Open at Royal Liverpool but hosted a European Tour event as far back as 1970 when the Martini championship was held there.

The 1990 Men’s Home Internationals were staged at Conwy which also hosted the 1983 Ladies British Open Amateur Championship.

Played off its tips at 6,901 yards, it has three monster par fours over 450 yards off the men’s championship tees but even off the yellows, at 6,476 it’s long holes into the wind are seriously stern tests.

The GB&I squad (age and club/country in brackets):

Hannah Darling (16, Broomieknowe, Scotland)
Shannon McWilliam (20, Aboyne, Scotland)
Annabell Fuller (17, Roehampton, England)
Olivia Mehaffey (21, Royal County Down Ladies, Ireland)
Lily May Humphreys (17, Stoke by Nayland, England)
Emily Toy (21, Carlyon Bay, England)
Hazel MacGarvie (19, Royal Troon, Scotland)
Isobel Wardle (19, Prestbury, England)
Julie McCarthy (20, Forrest Little, Ireland)
Annabel Wilson (18, Lurgan, Ireland)

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ENGLAND’S women’s team will be looking to go one better than last year when they finished runners-up to Scotland in the Ladies Home Internationals, at Ballybunion, in Ireland.

The Home Internationals get under way when England face Wales at Downfield Golf Club, in Scotland, on Wednesday.

They will then face the Auld Enemy on Thursday before facing the last of their Home Nations opponents, Ireland, on Friday.

The selectors have a strong array of talent at their disposal , and have named Women’s Amateur Champion Emily Toy in their seven-strong squad.

Toy is joined by Hertfordshire’s current English Women’s Amateur Champion Ellen Hume, and the player she beat – her predecessor Lily May Humphreys – who has won three big titles aleady in 2019 – in the team that travelled north of the border, earlier this week.

Even without Roehampton’s Fuller sisters or Berkhamsted’s Alice Hewson, the recent winner of the European Amateur Championship, England can go into their matches with Wales, Ireland and hosts Scotland with every confidence.

Twenty-one-year-old Toy claimed the biggest title of her career at the Women’s Amateur Championship at Royal Co. Down, in June, where she beat New Zealand’s Amelia Garvey in the final.

The member at Cornwall’s Carlyon Bay also won the New South Wales Amateur Championship, in Australia, at the start of the year and been flying ever since.

Debutant Hume won her English crown at Sauntion and has also won the West of England Championship – and the Faldo Series’ England Girls’ Championship – this summer.

Essex ace Humphreys, a member at Stoke-by-Nayland, claimed the Welsh and Irish Strokeplay titles in May, and the Annika Invitational Europe.

Humphreys played in last year’s Home Internationals and has since represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Vagliano Trophy at Royal St George’s, as well as for England at the European Ladies’ Team Championship, in July.

Cheshire’s Isobel Wardle won this season’s Comboy Leveret and was second at the Welsh Ladies’ Open Strokeplay,

The 19-year-old, from Prestbury GC, reached the quarter-final at the English Women’s Amateur and the last 16 at the Women’s Amateur.

Wardle was also third at the St Rule Trophy, fourth at the Portuguese International Ladies’ and fifth at the Spanish International in the early part of the season.

Somerset’s Mimi Rhodes reached the quarter-final of the Women’s Amateur, and was eighth in the German Girls’ Open as well as ninth in the Annika Invitational Europe.

The 17-year-old represented England in the European Girls’ Team Championship last month, where she was fourth in the individual competition.

Rhodes, a member at Burnham and Berrow, was part of the winning English team in last year’s Girls’ Home Internationals, in Ireland.

Leicstershire’s Lianna Bailey, won the 2018 St Rule Trophy at St Andrews and finished second in the same event this year.

The 22-year-old, from Kirby Muxloe GC, represented England in this year’s European Team Championship.

Bailey was also a member of the team that finished runners-up to Scotland in the 2018 Women’s Home Internationals in Ireland.

Norfolk’s Amelia Williamson won the Chiberta Grand Prix, in France, in July, and was third at the Critchley Astor Salver, at Sunningdale.

The 19-year-old, from Royal Cromer GC, was seventh at the Dutch International Junior Open.

She followed that up by sharing 11^th place behind Hewson at the European Amateur at Parkstone.

Williamson was also part of the winning English team at last year’s Girls’ Home International.

For live scoring click here.

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