MacDonald meets Stasi in semi-final

SCOTTISH champion Kelsey MacDonald is through to this morning's semi-finals of the British Women's Open Amateur Championship at Ganton.

But Curtis Cup player Sally Watson was beaten in the quarter-finals on another very hot day at the Yorkshire venue.

MacDonald, a 19-year-old Stirling University student and Nairn Dunbar Golf Club member, was so unlucky not to be selected for the recent Curtis Cup match but she beat one US player, Olivia Lansing, by 2 and 1 yesterday to reach the last four, in which she will face another, even more highly-rated international player from the States.

MacDonald will cross swords with 32-year-old Meghan Stasi for a second time, having beaten her by 3 and 2 in the semi-finals of the Doherty match-play tournament on Florida's Orange Blossom Tour in January 2008.

Stasi was Meghan Bolger when she played for the USA in the 2008 Curtis Cup at St Andrews and she won the US women's mid-amateur championship in 2006 and again in 2007

"Missing out on selection for this year's Curtis Cup match has spurred me on to win the Scottish title and also to do well here," said MacDonald. whose long-term goal is to play in the 2012 Curtis Cup match in her home town of Nairn before she completes her degree course at Stirling and turns pro. "I am playing very well at the moment but I am taking nothing for granted. It's been a busy year for me already but I am trying to manage my time better so that I don't get to the exhausted stage."