Carly Booth has a great relationship with India and the Hero Women’s Indian Open. She has appeared in a promotion for Indian Tourism and has made eight previous visits to India for the flagship women’s golf event of the country. Her latest appearance will be the ninth one, a number that Becky Morgan had touched before winning the Hero Women’s Indian Open last year. Booth will be hoping that nine is her lucky number, too.
However, the HWIO has not always been kind to Carly, as she missed the cut the last five times from 2014 to 2018. She also came in 2010, 2011 and 2012 while 2013 has been the only edition she has missed in this decade. Her best finish at the event has been T-22 in 2012, which incidentally was the year when Carly won her first two Ladies European Tour titles.
Now she comes back to India again, but having ended that title drought his season with a win last month at the Tipsport Czech Ladies Open. She is in good form and will be among those to watch at the DLF’s Gary Player-designed Black Knight course as she is also familiar with the course.
Currently No. 7 on the Ladies European Tour, the Scottish star will be one of the leading lights at the 2019 edition of the $500,00 Hero Women’s Indian Open, which tees off at the DLF Golf and Country Club on October 3.
Booth turned professional in 2010 after a stellar amateur career and her father, Wally Booth, who created a course for Carly and her brother, Wallace, was himself a wrestler, who won a silver medal at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.
Carly was seen as a prodigy and she seemed to be fulfilling her promise when she won twice in 2012, at the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open and the Deutsche Bank Ladies Swiss Open. Then she went through a lean run for seven years before picking up her third title late last month.
The ongoing season has seen something of a turnaround in Booth’s fortunes. Besides the Czech Ladies Open win, she has had two top five finishes from 14 LET tournament. She was fourth at the Canberra Classic in Australia and ended tied for fifth in the South African Women’s Open in March.
The Manchester-based golfer will have fellow Scot Catriona Matthew for company in India and Matthew will be in India for the first time after successfully piloting Europe to a dramatic final day last-match win over the United States at Gleneagles in Scotland three weeks ago.
The HWIO celebrates its 10th anniversary on the Ladies European Tour and is now in its 13th staging.
The tournament first began in 2007 with a purse of US $100,000 and it grew to US $300,000 when Hero took over the title sponsorship in 2010.
It is now worth half a million dollars and the winner takes home US $75,000.
Some of the established international participants who have entered the field include the defending champion Becky Morgan, the 2017 winner Camille Chevalier, other leading names like Beth Allen and Becky Brewerton, both former LET Order of Merit winners and other LET winners including Meghan MacLaren, Marianne Skarpnord, Kanyalak Preedasuttijit, Astrid Vayson de Pradenne, Florentyna Parker and Linda Wessberg.
The Indian challenge will be led by Diksha Dagar, winner of the South African Women’s Open. The other leading Indians are Tvesa Malik, Gauri Bishnoi, Ridhima Dilawari, Astha Madan, Smriti Mehra, Vani Kapoor, Amandeep Drall and Gursimar Badwal.
