Kelsey MacDonald reveals Curtis Cup disappointment after title triumph

The 19-year-old Nairn Dunbar player was all smiles after beating Pitreavie's Louise Kenney by 5 and 3 in Saturday's 18-hole final at Craigielaw, but her mood darkened when asked about her omission from the team to face the Americans in next month's biennial clash.

While two of her Scottish team-mates, Sally Watson and Pamela Pretswell, made Mary McKenna's line-up, MacDonald, now a national double champion as she already held the Scottish Under-21 title, was only deemed good enough to be put on standby as first reserve.

"I think I have shown everyone that I should have been in the team," said MacDonald. "It was very disappointing, especially when you consider that, in the European rankings, I am third among those players who were in the Great Britain & Ireland squad.

"I was told what tournaments to play in and won one of them (at Hacienda del Alamo in Spain] and it is disappointing that I have wasted both my time and money, having taken a semester off at Stirling University so that I could focus on the Curtis Cup."

MacDonald, who is studying sport and psychology, still intends to be in the amateur ranks when the 2012 match comes around and will be even more disappointed if she misses out on that, given it is being played on her own doorstep at Nairn.

"I'm not ready to turn professional yet," she added. "While there are exceptions, a lot of the girls who have made the move in recent years are struggling and I want to make sure I'm ready so I'll get my degree first and then take things from there."

While she only qualified as the 14th seed, MacDonald was a class act in the match-play phase in sunny East Lothian, seeing off rising star Rachael Watton and Paul Lawrie protege Laura Murray before clinching the title with a solid if unspectacular display against Kenney.

"It was hard to keep up the standard of my semi-final (in which she and Murray shared 12 birdies] but I was steady and didn't make many mistakes," said the champion, who revealed she's received an invitation to play in the Ladies' Scottish Open at Archerfield Links later in the year.

When MacDonald teed up in the same event at The Carrick three years ago, Spencer Henderson, the Scottish Golf Union's national junior coach, caddied for her and has since become her coach, a role he also fills for beaten finalist Kenney.

"It was great for the pair of them to reach the final as they've both taken some serious knocks this year," said Henderson. "Kelsey plays at 100mph and that can sometimes be her undoing, but that's the way she lives her life and it would be wrong to take that away from her game completely. Both Kelsey and Louise work very hard on every aspect of their game and, while the Curtis Cup was a disappointment for them, they've both bounced back well and now they'll both be hoping to make the (Scotland] team for the Espirito Santo Trophy later in the year."

Having seen her title dream dashed in the final for the second year in a row, Kenney was distraught in the immediate aftermath of a match in which she felt her ball striking was on a par with earlier in the week, when she'd shot a four-under-par 69 in the qualifying, only to be frustrated as shots bounded through the bouncy greens.