From a tannery, to a swimming pool, to a £1 million indoor golf facility. Things have certainly changed at the Loretto School Golf Academy down the years. The 18th century building in Musselburgh has had a bigger facelift than an ageing Hollywood dame but for Rick Valentine, the school’s director of golf, there is one thing that doesn’t change. The work ethic required to make it in this game.
On the day Loretto School announced another extension to its long-standing sponsorship of the Scottish boys and girls’s under-14 championships, Valentine reflected on the achievements of his late golfing granny, Jessie, the multiple Scottish and British amateur champion. It’s 80 years now since she made her debut in the Curtis Cup of 1936, the first of seven appearances in the biennial encounter. Here in 2016, there will be no Scot in the GB&I side for next month’s match against the US.
These omissions can by cyclical, of course. There were no Scots in the GB&I men’s Walker Cup team in 2013, for example, but a tartan trio played a key role in last year’s winning side at Lytham. In addition to his work at Loretto, where he helps deliver golf to 260 pupils aged between 5 and 18 each week, Valentine is a coach with the women’s national team and the pearls of wisdom that he gleaned from granny Jessie still stick in the mind.
“I played golf with her until she was in her 80s,” said Valentine, who designed the indoor facility at Loretto and believes Scotland needs more of them. “The main thing she passed down was work ethic. You are not born with anything. A lot of people talk of natural talent but a lot of that talent is based on the number of hours they have put in and the dedication they have shown. That doesn’t change through the years, whether it was my gran or someone like Catriona Matthew. That’s what I try to pass on to the players. In any line of sport, the successful ones are the hard workers. Yes, we have missed out on the Curtis Cup but we have a strengthening squad of players.
“We spoke to the girls about the men's Walker Cup and how that proves how the cycle goes. I think it’s only a matter of time before we get back in those GB&I teams.”
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