Carlton on course to match fiancee's Scottish title win

CALLUM Macaulay, who won the Scottish Amateur title at Carnoustie in 2008, could find himself walking down the aisle with a fellow national champion as his new wife when the European Tour player gets married early next year.

His fiancee, Clare-Marie Carlton, a 23-year-old from Paisley who met Macaulay when the pair worked at Mearns Castle Golf Academy in Glasgow, is through to the quarter-finals in the Scottish Ladies' (Close) Amateur Championship at Craigielaw, where she meets Selkirk's Martine Pow, the leading qualifier, this morning.

Carlton, who is now employed at the Playsport facility at East Kilbride, made it to the last eight in the event for the third time with a hard-earned two-hole win over experienced county player Susan Wood, admitting afterwards that she'd definitely become a better player since meeting Macaulay.

"It is quite competitive when we play matches and my mindset has definitely improved thanks to Callum," said the Fereneze player. "Before going off to Italy, where he's playing on the Challenge Tour this week, he told me to come here and believe in myself."

Pow, the oldest player left standing at 45, squeezed through in the morning at the 19th, which she birdied after driving the green, against Elderslie's Alyson McKechin before taking just under two hours to beat Baberton's Karen Marshall 7 and 6 after lunch, by which time the wind had picked up for the first time during the week.

"I like to play fast," said the 2006 champion, who is travelling from her home in Selkirk and, despite her early finish, had no plans whatsoever to use the spare time on her hands to get in some extra practice. "I'll pay my pound for a bucket of balls in the morning and that will do me fine," she added.

In the pick of the quarter-finals, Megan Briggs meets Louise Kenney in a repeat of last year's final at Southerness, where the former won 4 and 3 and is still on course to become to first player to make a successful defence of the title since Anne Laing in 2004.

Briggs, a 20-year-old law student who is in the middle of her third-year exams at Strathclyde University, recovered from losing the opening hole to a birdie – she took six of the next seven holes – to beat Rachael Taylor, the 18-year-old who had travelled over from Germany to play in the event.

"I love match play golf – my mindset is a lot more positive thanks to the fact you can just forget about a bad shot," said the Kilmacolm player, who has her boyfriend, Scotland badminton international Gordon Thomson, caddying this week.

Kenney, who was "steady" in beating Tain's Sammy Vass in the second round, said of today's re-match: "Megan played great to win at Southerness but I didn't feel I did myself justice and I just want to play well this time."

Kelsey MacDonald, the first reserve for next month's Curtis Cup, was approximately four-under-par in winning her two matches and now meets Rachael Watton, a 17-year-old Mortonhall member, while the host club's Jane Turner takes on Laura Murray of Alford in the other match in the bottom half of the draw.

SCORES IN DIGEST, PAGE 57