Golfer clinches national title

Emma Carberry put the sparkle on the weather-hit English Women’s Open Mid-Amateur Championship at Wetherby Golf Club with a superb winning score of seven-under-par for 36 holes.

The 19-year-old was two-under on Saturday morning and five-under in the afternoon to finish three strokes clear of her closest challenger, Kirsty Rands, of Surrey.

Carberry promptly dedicated her first major win to her late grandfather, Eric Derry, saying: “I lost my granddad in April and this is for him. He used to say to me: ‘Isn’t it time you won a tournament’?”

He would have been delighted by the strength of the field she beat, which included two members of Great Britain & Ireland’s victorious Curtis Cup team, English champion Kelly Tidy and Welsh champion Amy Boulden, and international Hayley Davis, who has won the English women’s and girls’ titles.

The championship was disrupted by bad weather since it started last Thursday. Play was suspended for a total of 3½ hours on the first day, washed out completely on Friday and although the sun shone for most of Saturday, there was another suspension of 30 minutes when a thunderstorm swept over the Yorkshire course.

The repeated delays forced a change of format from matchplay to Saturday’s 36-hole strokeplay event. Carberry and Charlotte Thomas set the first round pace at two-under, closely followed by Charlotte Thompson and Kirsty Rands.

The local girl’s aim in the afternoon was to play around par, but instead she notched up six birdies and a solitary bogey on the fourth.

Highwoods clubmate Chelsea Masters was 19th in the final standings with an eight-over-par total of 154. See Friday’s Bexhill Observer for the full article.