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| Leona Maguire |
Three Irish players and five from England, including world number one Leona Maguire, have been selected for Great Britain and Ireland’s Curtis Cup team.
Maguire is joined by Olivia Mehaffey and Maria Dunne, with England represented by Bronte Law, Alice Hewson, Meghan MacLaren, Rochelle Morris and Charlotte Thomas.
Maguire, Law, Mehaffey and Hewson were selected automatically as the top players in the world amateur golf ranking, with MacLaren and Morris earning their places as the top players not otherwise exempt from the LGU order of merit.
Thomas and Dunne were chosen by selectors for the 39th staging of the event between the top female amateurs from Great Britain and Ireland and the United States, which will be staged at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club from June 10th-12th.
The team will be captained by Aberdeen solicitor Elaine Farquharson-Black, who played in the contest in 1990 and 1992.
“We have an extremely talented team which has considerable experience of playing amateur golf at the highest level,” Farquharson-Black said.
“I am looking forward to meeting up with the team at The Castle Golf Club to prepare for the match.
“With some of the best players in the world on both sides, it is going to be a really exciting Curtis Cup.”
The United States has won eight of the last nine contests, although Great Britain and Ireland did taste victory in the last home tie at Nairn in 2012
The stunning Dun Laoghaire Golf Club is in fact situated close to Enniskerry in Co. Wicklow, but resides on the Dublin side of the Dublin Wicklow border, with the majestic Wicklow Mountains as its nearest neighbours.
The course decamped the seaside town of Dun Laoghaire in 2007, after ninety-seven years, for the picturesque Ballyman Glen, nestled at the foot of the spectacular Sugarloaf Mountain.
The origins of the Club date back as far as 1909, when a number of Kingstown (as Dun Laoghaire was then known) residents assembled at the town’s Royal Marine Hotel on December 9th for the inaugural meeting of Kingstown Golf Club.
The Curtis Cup Match is played every two years. The players are selected by their respective golf associations, with the USGA selecting the United States team and the Ladies Golf Union naming the GB&I players.
The Curtis sisters, Harriot and Margaret, had competed in the 1905 British Ladies Amateur at Royal Cromer Golf Club, where an informal match had occurred between teams of American and British golfers, and they wanted to promote the international friendships in the world of women's golf.
In 1927, the sisters, winners of the US Women's Amateur four times between them, presented a cup to begin the Women's International Cup. The trophy, a silver bowl of Paul Revere design, is inscribed, "To stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands".
Discussions between various golf associations had been underway since 1924, but it was not until 1931 that the USGA and LGU agreed to co-sponsor the event. It was hoped that the French Golf Union would eventually participate, but that never occurred.
The first Curtis Cup match was held in 1932, at the Wentworth Club in England. A United States team defeated a team from Great Britain and Ireland 5 1/2 to 3 1/2 in this inaugural event.
In winning the 2014 match, the USA team took their overall record in the Curtis Cup series to 28 wins, 7 losses, and 3 drawn matches.
The 2016 Match, the 39th in the history of the event, to be held at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club which is situated just outside of Dublin Ireland, will have the GB&I team looking for only their 8th win in the series.
Throughout the event's long history, some of the best women amateur's from the six countries involved have competed on the GB&I and USA teams and this will be no different in the 39th Curtis Cup match.
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