It’s the morning after the Sunday of the AIG Women’s Open as I write this and I can’t help but wonder how on earth Lydia Ko is feeling as she opens her eyes and remembers she has just won a major round the Old Course at St Andrews.

It’s been a  fairytale fortnight for the Kiwi with a gold medal-winning performance at the Olympics in Paris and now this, her third major title coming more than eight years after her last.  She described these past few weeks as “Cinderella-like” which should serve as a reminder to us all that Cinderella spent a lot of time unseen and unappreciated, methodically working through her chores with no reward.

Hard work and persistence do get rewarded in the end in all good fairytales, however, and Lydia has navigated the difficult waters of unprecedented early success (she was the youngest-ever world No 1 at a mere seventeen years of age) followed by a relatively barren period with no majors to her name.  Her resilience, perseverance and steadfastness then enabled the slow steady climb to the realisation of all her dreams – that Olympic gold, entry into the LPGA Hall of Fame and her third major.

The firsts keep coming for her – she’s the first New Zealander to win the Women’s Open;  the first player to win both the Smyth Salver for the low amateur, which she did in 2013, and then the title itself at the same venue, in this case on arguably the most famous course in the world.  And she’ll be the first champion to defend her title in Wales, which she will do next year when the championship moves to glorious Royal Porthcawl.  It’ll be Lydia’s first time to visit Wales as well, which she is looking forward to, and all this chat reassures me that her retirement from the game may be slightly further away than I previously thought.  Thank goodness for that.  She’s very special and the longer she graces the fairways of this world the better our game will be.

The winner of the aforementioned Smyth Salver, which is presented to the low amateur each year, was England’s Lottie Woad.  What a thrilling moment for her to stand beside Lydia at the prize presentation and realise that eleven years ago Lydia was receiving that very same salver.  Lottie must be hoping and thinking that she has what it takes to win the big prize sometime in the next decade or so.

At 20 years of age she is already building her own impressive resume.  In April of this year she was the first European to win the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and now she has snared the low amateur prize on another storied venue.  Lottie entered the final round five shots ahead of her nearest challenger, Spain’s Julia Lopez Ramirez, which you may have thought would provide her with a comfortable day.  Not so.  Out several hours ahead of Lottie, Julia must have frightened the life out of the Englishwoman when she birdied five out of her first ten holes.  The difficult, swirling conditions on the back nine derailed the Spanish challenge and Lotte took the salver by four shots, signing off at the last with a birdie and a creditable tied tenth finish in a major.

So, now it’s on to the Curtis Cup for Lottie…..and for this humble blog and many of its friends.

Over the course of the last week the two teams contesting the Cup have descended on the wonderful heathland venue that is Sunningdale and on the day this blog is posted Lottie will proudly lead out her Great Britain and Ireland teammates in the greatest women’s amateur golf event of them all.

Past players from both sides of the Atlantic are present, relishing their reunion and reaffirming friendships made way back when.  There have been friendly contests – the Supporters’ Saucer and the Past Players’ match;  there have been lunches and dinners and drinks receptions and lots of chat, reminiscing and catching up.

Hopefully, the following snaps will give a flavour of proceedings so far.

 

The week is already a colossal success from the point of view of us oldies and watching the skill and athletic play of the two teams, always a joy and a delight, is still ahead of us.  What a privilege to be even a small part of it all.

 

 

Enid Wilson was never one to mince her words.  “We were a shambles,” she said.  “The Americans had been practising, not just to familiarise themselves with the course but to work out their foursomes pairings.  They didn’t play Scotch foursomes so they had to get used to the format.  We didn’t know who we were playing with until we were on the way to the 1st tee….They won all three matches.”

Enid, who became a formidable figure in the game, terrifying generations of female golfers with her forthright views in The Daily Telegraph, was talking about the first Curtis Cup match, played over a single day on the East Course at Wentworth in May 1932.  GB and I (Great Britain and Ireland, as they now are) duly lost to the USA and Joyce Wethered (later Lady Heathcoat-Amory), the home captain and a player beyond compare, confessed that she wasn’t any great shakes as a captain.

Her team, who did at least know the course, pitched up at about teatime the day before the match and on the day itself had to scavenge for crumbs at lunchtime because no one had thought to make provision for them.  The visitors, much better organised simply by virtue of being the away team and expertly marshalled by their formidable captain Marion Hollins, had arranged to have lunch at their hotel, away from the hordes of spectators.

“It was a rout of the disorganised,” Enid said.  “And deservedly so.”

The sisters Harriot and Margaret Curtis, from a large, wealthy Boston family, were both champion golfers who travelled overseas to play before the First World War and for many years harboured hopes of establishing a competition “To stimulate friendly rivalry between the women golfers of many lands”.  That is the inscription on the Curtis Cup, a lovely bowl of Paul Revere design and while the result matters and the competition is fierce, it’s the friendships that really count.

At Sunningdale this week there are lots of brilliant old photographs and boards chronicling the history of the competition, so even the greenest newbies and those who still think that history is bunk will start to learn the names of the pioneers and outstanding golfers who have gone before.  Many of us here, including undistinguished hackers like me, go back a long way and met the likes of Enid, who loved to talk and Joyce Wethered, who did not!  At least not about golf and certainly not about her own exploits.  In later life gardening and art were two of her passions.

It’s a real gathering of the clans here at Sunningdale this week, where the only surprise is that the players have not been allocated a dog each.  It’s more or less verboten to take to the course for a round without a canine companion.  There are lots of labs and spaniels and in one notable case a venerable barrel-shaped chihuahua, who these days sticks close to the clubhouse and the treats on tap there.

At the opening ceremony, Seamus, the Irish wolfhound, was one of the stars of the show and was quite happy to be the centre of attention.

And just to show off the uniforms and the bearskins and some of the always colourful American supporters enjoying the pageantry, here’s a slightly better effort.

One of the joys of looking at old team photographs is to compare the fashions then and now and, often, to wonder who on earth chose the uniforms.  It’s fun to look at the styles down the ages and marvel at how young everyone looks and check out what shoes they’ve chosen!

To finish, back to Enid.  In 1984, at Muirfield, under the captaincy of the formidable Diane Bailey, GB and I came agonisingly close to winning.  It was a classic BBU (brave but unavailing) and they lost by a point, their 13th consecutive defeat.  Two years later, when the team to face the Americans at Prairie Dunes, in the middle of Kansas, in temperatures that would reach 100 degrees fahrenheit (high 30s centigrade) was announced, Enid was not impressed.

“Bring out your dead,” she wrote, a tad unkindly.  “If this team wins, I’ll eat my hat.”

The main reason for her ire was the selection of Belle Robertson and Mary McKenna, two of the finest golfers Britain and Ireland have ever produced, who had been on numerous teams and never been on the winning side.  They were, in Enid’s view, well past their sell-by date, scarred beyond saving and no longer of any use whatsoever.

However, Diane, captain again, was determined to put a stop to the losing rot and had a cunning plan.  She played Belle and Mary only in the foursomes, paired together and they won their first match and halved their second.  The visitors won all three foursomes on the first day and the first three singles in the afternoon – the format has been changed now to include fourballs – and led by 6 1/2 points to 2 1/2.  The world of golf was in total shock.

GB and I steamrollered on, to win 13-5 and become the first team, men or women, amateur or professional, to win on US soil.  They were followed by the Ryder Cuppers, who won at Muirfield Village in 1987 and the Walker Cuppers, who won at Peachtree in 1989.

But it was the Curtis Cuppers who did it first.

And I’m not sure Enid ever did eat her hat.