The men may have been grousing, groaning, mimping and moaning about golf’s place in the Olympics but the good ladies are a far more embracing, intrepid bunch. Rory McIlroy’s well-documented and withering assessment of golf’s place in the Games may have raised question marks over the sport’s credibility as an Olympic pursuit but that’s only on the male front. For the women, it could become their biggest event. The best the game can muster, including the world No 1 Lydia Ko, are all heading to Rio to put on an occasion that will showcase the youthful talent and vibrancy of the female game in the current era. Before all that, of course, there are domestic matters to attend to and Scotland’s Catriona Matthew will compete in her first event since being officially confirmed as a golfing Olympian in this week’s Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open at Dundonald Links.
“When the top four men in the world are missing, it lessens any tournament but we are lucky in that our event will have a top field,” said Matthew as she looked ahead to Rio. “To win any Olympic medal would be a fantastic achievement. It's not something that I ever expected in my career.”
While Ko and others are not competing at Dundonald this week – Ko did last year as the Women’s British Open was at nearby Turnberry the following week – the Scottish event has still attracted a strong field and Matthew is at its forefront.
While fellow LPGA Tour campaigners like Beth Daniel and Cheyenne Woods, the niece of Tiger, will line up in Ayrshire, Matthew, who won her domestic championship in 2011 and 2013, is joined by plenty of her compatriots from the Ladies European Tour.
Among those is the former Scottish Ladies Amateur champion, Kelsey MacDonald, who seems to be hitting form at just the right time of the campaign. A first top-10 finish of the season in the Tipsport Golf Masters in the Czech Republic recently earned her an automatic spot in the Scottish event and avoided any cap-in-hand pleading to organisers.
“That was a result I’d been waiting for for quite a long time,” said the 25-year-old from Nairn. “I feel so confident with my golf at the moment but had I not had that finish then I would have had to rely on an invitation from the sponsors to get in.”
Pamela Pretswell, who made her debut in the US Women’s Open in California the other week, returns to home soil looking to build on a share of second in her last event in Europe at the Tipsport Masters while Glasgow’s Kylie Walker, a two-time winner on the European circuit, bolsters the tartan contingent in the field.
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