Elaine Farquharson-Black (left) and Tegwen Matthews watch Stephanie Meadow drive off the first tee in practice at Chantilly this morning. Image by Cal Carson Golf Agency.
Georgia Hall, the first player to win both the British women's and British girls open amateur championships within 12 months of each other. May hold the key to GB and I success at Chantilly. Images by Cal Carson Golf Agency.
COLIN FARQUHARSON REPORTS FROM CHANTILLY, nr PARIS
Golf Club de Chantilly 30 miles north of Paris, and its expansive woodland courses is ready, willing and more than able to host the 28th Vagliano Trophy match and the second Junior Vagliano Trophy contest between the Continent of Europe and Great Britain and Ireland.
It's a course that reminds me of Wentworth and The Berkshire - I have never been to Sunningdale or Walton Heath - except these English courses don't have wild boar inhabiting the forests as they do at Chantilly which is as famous for his racecourse and training stables - the Newmarket of France as it has been called- as it is for golf although, it has to be said, it is a golf course in a superb setting.
Plenty of Scottish golf clubs have bores aplenty but wild ones, now that's a bit different!
Tegwen Matthews, captain of the GB and I women's team, and Elaine Farquharson-Black, skipper of the Under-16s team for the first time, mixed up their combined squad of 15 players - nine for the main event and six for the Junior match, for the first practice session over the course this morning under a clear blue sky (rain is forecast to come in for Friday-Saturday when the Trophy matches will be played).
"We thought it would be good for team spirit and bonding to get them all playing together rather than keep them in their team line-ups," said Tegwen who, like former Scottish women's and girls champion Elaine, played in Vagliano Trophy matches of yesteryear.
At lunchtime it came to light that both teams had practised over a course longer than the one they will actually play when the real action starts. In an event run/organised by the host club club, the European Golf Association and the French Federation, somebody forgot to tell the Ladies Golf Union that the practice rounds would be off the back tees!
The saying "Too many chiefs ..." comes to mind!
A reminder of the GB and I teams:
VAGLIANO TROPHY
Amy Boulden (Conwy), Gabriella Cowley (Brocket Hall), Hayley Davis (Ferndown), Georgia Hall (Remedy Oak), Berfordwest), Bronte Law (Bramhall), Stephanie Meadow (Royal Portrush), Alexandra Peters (Notts Ladies), Amber Ratcliffe (Royal Cromer).
JUNIOR VAGLIANO TROPHY
Samantha Fuller (Roehampton), Alice Hewson (Berkhamsted), Sophie Lamb (Clitheroe), Fiona Liddell (Westfalisher, Gutersloh), Sophie Madden (West Essex), Olivia Mehaffey (Royal Co Down Ladies).
Captain Matthews has only three survivors in her line-up from the GB and I team who won back the Curtis Cup from America at The Nairn Golf Club last June - Amy Boulden, Bronte Law and Stephanie Meadow.
The Continent of Europe are on a three-game winning roll in the biennial Vagliano Trophy contest. They won 15-9 at Royal Porthcawl in 2011, 13-11 in Hamburg in 2009, and 15-9 at Fairmont St Andrews in 2007.
GB and I's last win (13-11), curiously enough, was achieved when the Vagliano Trophy match was played at this week's venue, Chantilly, in 2005.
"There's longer rough here at Chantilly than you normally get on woodland courses where the trees are the danger area. Here the long grass at the edge of the fairways is an incentive to hit the ball straight, " observed Mrs Farquharson-Black, an Aberdeen solicitor who specialises in planning, an expertise that should come in handy for a team captain.
As Tegwen Matthews summed up her role: "My job is to get the best out of the players I've been given for the match."
Golf Club de Chantilly, which has an old fashioned clubhouse as befits one of France's older clubs, has 400 members, including a strong junior section, has two courses.
The Vagliano and Junior Vagliano Trophy matches will be played over its older Vineuil Course and generally from the men's yellow tees which adds up to a par-72 lay-out (37-35) of 5,729 yards or approximately 6,301yd.
Peter McEvoy holds the men's Vineuil record of nine-under-par 63, achieved in the 1983 European amateur team championship and a fantastic score when you see the lay-out.
When the Continent of Europe chalked up a third win in a row over GB and I, I had a conversation with an EGA official who will remain nameless. He/she was of the opinion that the time had come to acknowledged that the Continent of Europe had caught up with and overtaken Great Britain and Ireland as the female amateur golf force on this side of the Atlantic and that it was time the Curtis Cup became a United States versus Europe contest, which the Curtis Cup sisters themselves hinted at and which, of course, has been the saviour of the Ryder Cup since Jack Nicklaus's open-the-frontiers suggestion was accepted in the late 1970s.
I agreed with that Curtis Cup-must-change opinion at the time but I am not so blinkered that I cannot change back again which I have done since GB and I's victory in the Astor Cup (formerly the Commonwealth tournament) followed by the magnificent Curtis Cup win over the Americans at Nairn last June.
What a pity that Tegwen Matthews could not lead out her Curtis Cup heroines just one more time to cut the cocky Continentals down to size. Are they cocky? Probably not but it is a nice bit of alliteration!
Golf writers should be neutral but I am wearing my heart on my sleeve at Chantilly. Allez, GB and I!
AMBER RATCLIFFE
BECKY HARRIES
SAMANTHA FULLER
ANOTHER NAME, PLEASE?
ALICE HEWSON ??
+All the pictures taken at Chantilly today should be up on the LGU website gallery soon ....
