Summer came crashing to a sobering, sodden halt in Scotland but at least a twinkling medal for Michele Thomson and Meghan MacLaren added a ray of sunshine to a thoroughly grisly day at the European Golf Team Championships over the PGA Centenary course.
Gleneagles was so wet, you almost felt like you were watching one of the Glasgow 2018 aquatic events. Even the television footage on the big screens just about had moss growing on it by the end.
Thomson and MacLaren weren’t too bothered by the appalling elements, though. While Spain and Sweden took gold in the men’s and women’s events respectively, a 3&1 victory for Thomson and MacLaren over their Great Britain colleagues, Laura Davies and Georgia Hall, in the bronze medal match completed a profitable weekend for this particular double act.
Having earned silver in the inaugural mixed team affair on Saturday, Thomson and MacLaren added a different colour of bauble to their collection with a hard-earned, attritional triumph.
They also added a total of £31,285 to their bank accounts for their weekend endeavours. For Aberdonian Thomson, that sum was more than six times what she has earned this season while it’s more than half of her entire career earnings during a stop-start stint on the Ladies European Tour.
After losing in the morning’s semi-finals, the GB pairing were determined not to leave empty handed. “We are absolutely delighted to come away with two medals,” said the 30-year-old Thomson. “The course was playing so long but we just ground it out.”
Two-down after six holes, Thomson and MacLaren levelled the match when Hall and Davies staggered to back-to-back bogeys at seven and eight. A birdie on the 14th put them ahead for the first time and they killed it off on the 17th.
“We were gutted in the morning about missing out on a gold medal chance, not losing money,” said MacLaren, who notched her maiden win on the Ladies European Tour in Australia earlier this season. “I’m not going to be telling everyone how much money we won here; I’ll be telling them I have two medals two show for the week.”
Davies and Hall, meanwhile, looked utterly miserable when they trudged off. When Davies holed a putt on the 16th to keep the match going, you half expected her to walk off the green muttering and cursing that the wretchedness was to last another hole.
The switch from fourballs to foursomes for the final day, plus a break to stage the mixed team event on Saturday, did not sit well with Davies. “It was pure misery, 35 holes of torture basically,” said the 54-year-old of a long, grim day. “I don’t understand what Saturday was all about. If they say it was about taking too long in fourballs then don’t have the mixed thing and just have semi-finals on Saturday and the final on the Sunday. That wasn’t fun today. Unless you win of course. If you win it’s great. We all love winning.”
Earlier in the day, when folk were simply damp as opposed to completely drookit, the home hopes of striking gold were dashed in the semi-finals.
Thomson and MacLaren left themselves with too much to do against Justine Dreher and Manon Molle of France after a damaging run which spawned six bogeys in eight holes from the third. The GB pairing were put to the sword on the driveable 14th when Molle trundled in a raking putt for an eagle two to complete a 5&4 victory.
In the other semi, Hall and Davies let a commanding lead slip like their grip on a soaked club.
Three up with five to play against Cajsa Persson and Linda Wessberg, Team GB lost the 14th, 15th and 16th before getting in a fankle in the bunker on the 18th and taking two to extricate themselves. Hall then missed a tiddler of a putt and the Swede’s won the match with a bogey six.
Persson and Wessberg would go on to beat the French to gold in a play-off while Spain’s Scott Fernandez, whose granny came from Glasgow, and Pedro Oriol took the men’s gold with a two hole win over Iceland’s Axel Boasson and Birgir Hafthorsson.
The hardy spectators deserved a medal too ...
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