It’s a busy old spell coming up for Catriona Matthew. This week it’s the Aberdeen Asset Management Ladies Scottish Open at Dundonald Links before she hops in the car and drives down to Woburn for the Women’s British Open. Not long after that, she’ll be on the plane to Rio to represent Great Britain in the Olympic golf competition. The build-up to that is gathering pace and parcels. The other day she took delivery of five colossal box loads of Games-related odds, sods, bits and bobs which possibly earned the postman a gold medal for actually heaving and humping the pile to her front door without keeling over. “The kids had quite a bit of fun going through it all,” she said with a smile.
There’s plenty to look forward to on the immediate horizon but in this game you’re often peering further ahead and Matthew can already scribble the 2017 Solheim Cup into her diary after she was unveiled yesterday as a vice-captain by European skipper Annika Sorenstam.
As a veteran of eight Solheim Cup campaigns down the seasons, it was hardly surprising that Sorenstam has called on the experience of the 46-year-old Scot. This backroom role does not necessarily mean she will retreat from the frontline of competitive action. Far from it. Matthew is still keen to be an on course leader too but, as ever, the former Women’s British Open champion will approach everything with calm, matter-of-fact reason. “I’d love to play and be a vice-captain at the same time but I’ll see how I’m playing,” said Matthew, who will partner Cheyenne Woods in today’s first round of the spectators-enter-free Ladies Scottish Open.
With the Solheim Cup set to return to Scotland in 2019, when Gleneagles stages the transatlantic tussle, the choice of Matthew as a vice-captain for the next edition of the event on US soil has only strengthened the widely held assumption that she will move into the main role in her homeland in three years’ time. By that stage she’ll be climbing the brae to 50 and, despite her sturdy, competitive longevity, she appreciates she can’t go on forever.
“Being a playing captain might be a step too far,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly be a playing captain now. There’s far too much involved. If I do put my name forward for the captaincy then I’d accept that I wouldn’t be playing in it.”
Matthew and the Solheim Cup go back a long way, to that wet weekend in 1992 when she watched Europe’s golfers beat the Americans as a flag-waving fan on the other side of the ropes. Since then, she has been on three winning sides and has racked up a hefty plunder of individual titles on the global stage. “I would never have imagined back then when I was walking round Dalmahoy in the rain that I’d play in eight and now be a vice captain,” said Matthew, whose only loss in Solheim Cup singles encounters came on her debut back in 1998. “You dream of doing these things but you never quite imagine it will happen.”
She probably never imagined she’d get a crack at the Olympics either but, despite all the downbeat deliberations and withdrawals on the men’s side, Matthew is relishing the chance to go for golfing gold. “Ladies golf will certainly benefit a lot more than men’s golf,” she said. “They get so much more exposure already. I just hope the men not going won’t lead to golf coming out of the Games. The ladies are supporting it so hopefully we can stay in it.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here