Martin Dempster: SPOTY snub an insult to young Georgia

Georgia Hall with the Ricoh Women's British Open at Royal Lytham.

Hall’s achievement in becoming the first home player to win the Ricoh Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham since Catriona Matthew at the same venue in 2009 was afforded just a 10-second mention on the show, which, quite  frankly, is an insult to the  22-year-old.

Even Iain Carter, the BBC’s outstanding golf correspondent, took to Twitter to express his disbelief that Hall hadn’t been listed among six nominees and there can surely be no dispute that the same thing would not have happened if it had been a British player winning the men’s equivalent at Carnoustie this year.

That said, golf doesn’t seem to rank very highly at all these days with the Beeb – not on television anyway – because, in the year he rose to world No 1 and also won the FedEx Cup, Rose also had a strong claim to at least have made that short list.

Looking at it positively, Francesco Molinari was deservedly rewarded for winning the Open Championship, becoming the first European player to pick up five points in a Ryder Cup and also coming out on top in the Race to Dubai as the Italian was voted World Sport Star of the Year.

However, for Europe’s winning side in that Ryder Cup in France to be beaten by the England women’s netball side for the Team of the Year Award was, for me anyway, summed up perfectly by my 21-year-old daughter. “That’s s***!”, she declared, shaking her head in disbelief.