Team Europe captain Catriona Matthew will get a close up look at her potential picks for September’s Solheim Cup at Gleneagles when she plays in the AIG Women’s British Open at Woburn this week, 10 years after winning the title at Royal Lytham.
Matthew is paired with England’s Bronte Law and American Cristie Kerr for the opening two rounds.
Law, the world’s second ranked European at No.22 on the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, would need one of four captain’s picks available to join the team. Law won the Ladies European Tour’s Qualifying School in December and became a member in January, but hasn’t played in the Eight Ranking Events over the two year Qualifying Period required to qualify automatically.
Pernilla Lindberg, Meghan MacLaren, Celine Herbin, Mel Reid, Carly Booth, Marianne Skarpnord, Madelene Sagstrom, Nuria Iturrioz, Esther Henseleit, Celine Boutier, Karine Icher and Nanna Koerstz Madsen are amongst the other European players in the field looking to impress the captain.
Matthew will name her four picks, joining the leading three players from the LET points list and the next five from the Rolex Rankings, as part of the full 12-woman team to face the United States, in a press conference on the afternoon of Monday 12th August, following next week’s Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club.
“Obviously it’s on my mind a lot. It’s the last couple of weeks now before the picks, so it’s a tense time for the players, and it’s going to be tricky telling the ones who don’t quite make it, so it’s always on your mind,” she said, adding that her draw with Bronte Law was pure coincidence.
“It will be nice to play with her and watch her on the golf course. I think you always learn a lot more watching someone playing in competition, so it will be nice to be out with her for a couple of days,” Matthew said, adding: “This is a perfect week for someone like Meghan or Esther to come out and have a really good week and have a good showing.”
There are 80 Solheim Cup points available for a win in the AIG Women’s British Open this week, scaling down to 2 points for 20th position.
Meanwhile, there are 70 points for a win in next week’s ASI Ladies Scottish Open, down to 7 for 10th position, so mathematically there are still 150 points available should a player win this week at Woburn and next week in Scotland.
“There’s still lots of permutations that could happen. This being a major, there’s loads of LET points on offer and world ranking points. If someone comes out and wins this event, or next week, as well, they could come out from nowhere. Obviously I’ve got a kind of group of people I’m looking at, but obviously also kind of got half an eye on others who could still come out and have a great couple of weeks,” Matthew said.
She believes that the Solheim Cup will provide a gripping climax to a terrific summer of women’s sport in the UK.
“Obviously you’ve had the World Cup in football, you’ve had the netball, then had the women’s cricket this summer, so it’s all kind of culminating in the Solheim Cup in September. I think it’s great that golf is getting that same exposure. Obviously the World Cup was a huge success on television, so hopefully people who have watched that might gravitate to watching the women’s golf if they didn’t normally. I think it’s just a bonus. I think if you see people are watching other women’s sport, I think they tend to think, we’ll watch women’s golf or watch the women’s cricket as well.”
As female athletes are shown in a way they never have been before, with more promotion and through more live women’s sport on television, Matthew believes that this will alter perceptions.
“In the end you just want it to be called sport rather than women’s sport. I think you just want it to be seen as just the Solheim Cup, you don’t need it to be seen as the women’s version of the Ryder Cup. I think we’re getting there, where you can just say, ‘oh, it’s World Cup this year’. So hopefully that’s where we will end eventually, but I think definitely I’d say over the last 10 or 15 years it’s really improved in exposure.”
