Martin Dempster: Rush to name cup side looks unwise

IF THE Walker Cup was once referred to as the Walkover Cup due to it being such a one-sided contest in favour of the Americans, heaven knows what we should be calling the Curtis Cup these days.

The last seven stagings of the amateur women’s biennial event have all ended in defeat for Great Britain & Ireland, who have to go back to the days when the likes of Catriona Matthew, Janice Moodie and Mhairi McKay were still in their ranks for the last period of success.

Before she was married, Matthew played on a winning team at Hoylake in 1992 then helped secure a draw in Chattanooga two years later, when Moodie and McKay were also in the side, before they went on to taste success at Killarney in 1996 – GB&I’s last win in the event.

The latest encounter takes place at Nairn in June, when the home team will be led into battle by Tegwen Matthews, the first Welsh woman to earn the honour, though an obvious choice having not only played in four matches between 1974 and 1980 but also serving as team manager under her predecessor, Mary McKenna.

The Americans have already named their eight-strong team for the contest on the banks of the Moray Firth; GB&I have taken the next step in their selection process by picking 12 players in a preliminary squad.

It contains two Scots, both of whom have strong credentials. Bothwell Castle’s Pamela Pretswell, for instance, has won the British Ladies Open Stroke-Play Championship since she played in the last match two years ago and wasn’t too far away from earning a card when she recently tried her luck at the Ladies European Tour Qualifying School in Spain.

Not for the first time in her career – golf played second fiddle as she completed a degree at Glasgow University – Pretswell has made a sensible decision by staying in the amateur ranks for another season and, at 22, she is the second oldest player amongst the GB&I hopefuls.

The other Scot in that dozen, Nairn Dunbar’s Kelsey MacDonald, just missed out two years ago and now has the added incentive of a hometown appearance before she makes the inevitable switch to the paid ranks. “To be given the chance of playing at Nairn and showing what I am capable of means so much to me,” said the 21-year-old of her squad selection.

What is puzzling, though, is the omission of a third Scot in the talented Sally Watson, who made her Curtis Cup debut as a 16-year-old at St Andrews in 2008 and also played in the match two years ago in Massachusetts. Watson is in her junior year at Stanford University, Tiger Woods’ alma mater in California, and reached the quarter-finals of last year’s US Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship at Bandon Dunes. She also won the Cougar Cup, an event hosted by Washington State University.

“I certainly would have been available for the Curtis Cup had I been selected for the squad,” Watson told The Scotsman. “I’ve been working hard this winter preparing my game for the spring, when I can hopefully pick up some more wins on the college circuit.” Those wins will need to come quickly if she wants to force her way into contention, with the Ladies Golf Union insisting that Watson, along with others, is still in the reckoning. The squad is gathering for a ‘team trial’ at Nairn over three days towards the end of March and the lucky eight are set to be announced straight afterwards.

It means the domestic season won’t have started before Matthews and her fellow selectors make their decision. The Helen Holm Trophy at Troon in April will count for nothing as far as the Curtis Cup is concerned and neither will the Welsh or Irish Open Stroke-Play Championships, other key early-season events.

A match at the beginning of June brings obvious difficulties, but there is a danger that the home team will go into this encounter – the sixth Curtis Cup to be held in the home of golf – without a player who has started the season on fire and would clearly add something positive to the cause. Take Pitreavie’s Louise Kenney, for example. Last season’s Scottish champion is a schoolteacher who can’t get the time off to travel to Florida for the Orange Blossom Tour at the start of the year. Her season normally starts at the Helen Holm, so is powerless to push herself into the frame for Nairn.

What would be wrong with leaving one spot free even until as late as the St Rule Trophy, which takes place the week before the match? If a GB&I player won at St Andrews, they’d be in a great frame of mind to take on the Americans.

Matthews already has a tough enough job on her hands as she bids to emulate compatriot Nigel Edwards, last year’s Walker Cup captain at Royal Aberdeen, by leading a GB&I team to victory on Scottish soil. It seems to me that picking a team based on how they perform over three days at Nairn more than two months ahead of a match is not the smartest of moves, though I hope to be proved wrong.