GB AND I PRE-MATCH PRESS CONFERENCE AT ST LOUIS, MISSOURI

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us. We have Captain Tegwen Matthews of the GB and I Team and Stephanie Meadow and Annabel Dimmock. It's been a lot of lead‑up for all of this. Tell us how you feel to finally be here in St. Louis and ready to compete.

TEGWEN MATTHEWS (pictured): Very excited and really can't wait for tomorrow now. It's been ‑‑ I don't know quite know where the two years has gone from then, but then landing in Atlanta last week, that went very quickly. But it was a great bonding with the team and it gave us a very good acclimatization for the heat and humidity, which we haven't had today but we have had and had to cope with it. So, yeah, we are ready to go.

THE MODERATOR: Stephanie, you've played on a team before, had the opportunity to win before. How do you feel coming into this week kind of being one of the veterans on the team?

STEPHANIE MEADOW (pictured): Old (laughing). No, definitely, it's great to have that experience behind me. I can pass things on to the girls. Hopefully I can be a lead for them. I think it gives us confidence.

THE MODERATOR: And Annabel, your first time experiencing something like this. Tell me what the whole week so far ‑‑ and you've already been with the team for two weeks, so what the last two weeks has been like?

ANNABEL DIMMOCK (pictured below): The last two weeks, the first week was great. I really enjoyed myself. I didn't know Steph 

before and I didn't know Charlotte before but we got on really well.I feel  I've known them just as long as the other guys now, which is great. But yeah, I'm really excited.

Q. I wanted to ask you, you played on other teams, as well. I think that you were able to win last time ‑‑ and the record is very lopsided there. But once the European side started winning The Ryder Cup more often, it became a much better competition, bigger deal. Do you think that that could be the case with the Curtis Cup? How important is it that you guys were able to win last time?

STEPHANIE MEADOW: Definitely, it was huge. For it to be in Scotland and we had huge crowds. I think we broke records. To just be able to promote (women's amateur) golf back home is great.

I think for us to win, it might inspire some more of our girls back home to get more into the game. But this has always been such a prestigious event. It's a friendly rivalry and it's something that they have all worked so hard for. I wouldn't change anything.

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: I think winning at Nairn, we had a huge impetus there with the home crowd but we really had an awful lot of support prior to that. We did a lot of sort of getting people engaged on Facebook and Twitter and myself, you know, from about four months out, I was posting loads of things on Facebook about how the preparations were going and how the girls were doing. That is actually how an awful lot of people communicate now.

People do a lot of things via Facebook or Twitter, and then as a result, even now, when we're here in America, the support on Facebook and Twitter that we are getting from everybody at home makes me feel like it's almost a home match. So you recognize that as an important medium how to reach people, and it's been great fun, yeah.

Q. Do you agree that aside from personally wanting to win, but going forward is that a great thing for the Curtis Cup?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Oh, for sure. I think so.

Q. For one side not to dominate.

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: I think it's important, otherwise it just becomes ‑‑ oh, it's just another match and it's the USA always win and you're not going to get any kind of enthusiasm from the girls back at home to aspire to being the very top of their field in amateur ladies golf, which could be culminating is playing in a Curtis Cup team.

Now it feels as if that result in Nairn has had a good effect on girls getting on the team and even the girls I've got with me now, it's a very different team. Six of the team are completely different girls.

And you just take someone like Annabel, two years ago, where were you? Not at Nairn. That itself is an impetus, showing that Annabel is here now today; maybe as a result of the Curtis Cup win at Nairn, maybe not. But certainly having the high profile of winning a Curtis Cup made a huge difference in British golf.

Q. You won back home last year, but to win on U.S. soil would it mean even more to win here?

STEPHANIE MEADOW: Definitely. I think in any sport it's always harder to win away from home. I think to win on U.S. soil, so ‑‑ see, this is the thing that's very different this year I think; that we have four girls on the team that are at US colleges now.

So it's not as if a lot of us are not very comfortable here. A lot of us play American golf all the time. Annabel played successfully on the Orange Blossom Tour in Florida in January.
So I think that's a big advantage that we have compared to years in the past.

But it's always exciting to win away from home, and the supporters that we do have here, which is actually quite a few. A lot have made a long trip to come follow us, and for us to win would be really special for them.

Q. I'm going to stereotype and say for St. Louis, the Curtis Cup is a learning experience and none of us know tomorrow how many people will show up for this event. Would it be fair to say from your own experience when you played in your part of the world generates a little more excitement than you experience when you played in this country?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: I think when you go back to many years ago when I did play in Curtis Cup, that was certainly the case in my first Curtis Cup in San Francisco. There were hardly any spectators at all there. Apawamis at Rye, New York, was my other away game in the Curtis Cup. There weren't many spectators there, either.
Depends obviously on the venue in the U.K. but generally I think you're probably right, yes, it does generate more. I don't quite know where that is, other than the fact America is a big country and a lot of people would have to travel.

Q. You haven't had this team together before until just recently, right? What kind of factor does that play?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Well, if you look at it on paper and you go, okay, that's a strange thing. For instance, it's the first time I've flown out of the U.K. with only half my team and the other half already being in America. So that sort of felt a bit strange, normally we would have all travelled together out of the U.K.

As Steph said, the fact that there were four of our girls already here, it's not only comforting for me; it's comforting for the rest of the girls, because we have got loads of experience in those four girls who can tell us what it's like and what's normal and don't eat those sweets and do eat these sweets and all those silly little things that make a difference.

It's different but it's not a disadvantage in any way.

Q. You practised in Atlanta?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Yes.

Q. Can you talk about where you practiced and what you did and why?

ANNABEL DIMMOCK: So we got there, the first day we played, just like getting the cobwebs out. The course was really good. It was tough. I found it tough playing the first day because I was tired on the course, obviously with the jet‑lag. I just found the course was really weird, different, the grass and the greens. Even my yardages are different out here.
We just practised the second day and the third day we practised in the morning and then we played the par 3 against the juniors in the afternoon which was really good fun. We met some really good little players actually. We played with them around the par 3 course which was really good.

Then the next day, we played the men, like the male members at the club there, 36‑holes match, which was really good. It was really tough, as well. They had actually really good players, didn't they. I played like an ex‑pro and he was really good to play. It was good, like pressure match. I thought it was good preparation.

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: And experiencing the full heat and humidity and the full storm, because I think you played about 12, 13 holes in the afternoon and you could see the clouds coming over and wallop, it came down.

Prior to that it had been very hot, very humid and all of a sudden, whoosh. It was a good grounding to what you can expect even here I guess.

Q. Where was it?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Atlanta Athletic Club.

Q. For both of you as players, Atlanta Athletic has this unique fairway grass, the Diamond Zoysia; almost a perfect playing surface and this course (at St Louis) is true bentgrass. As you practise this week, have the playing characteristics coming off the fairway been pretty much the same as you experienced at Atlanta Athletic?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Well, my home club, the West Course is bentgrass. It's literally like this, but not as green. So I'm really used to that and the greens here I like. But the greens at Atlanta Athletic Club were Bermuda, which I found different.

STEPHANIE MEADOW: The fairways are very similar, same thing and they a lot of the same grasses in Alabama. I know at Atlanta Athletic Club they had some problems with the zoysia, they had to re‑seed a lot. Some of the fairways were a little rough but other than that it was great.

Q. What are your impressions of this course?

STEPHANIE MEADOW: I think as far as all of us being together ‑‑ yeah, two heads are always better than one. Just at the start of the week we played in twosomes and did our own thing and came up with our own game plans and especially today we talked through some stuff and just tried to get people's opinions. The golf course, it's in fantastic condition and the greens are great. I think the hardest part about this golf course is the greens. Tee‑to‑green, approach shots are not too bad.

But positioning yourself in the right part of the green is important. Having as many uphill putts as you possibly can is important. The staff here have done a tremendous job and it really couldn't be any better.

ANNABEL DIMMOCK:  I really like it. I like how every hole is different here. I really like the fairway undulations. I think it makes the course interesting. It's not like a flat fairway to aim for. There's different parts on the fairway and you can get different bounces.

It's cool, because like you can hit two shots out there and they can bounce off different part of the fairway and you can go to different parts of the fairway. So that's good. Makes a difference.

Q. Players at your level have played collegiate and match play, but you're also playing partner golf and there are not that many opportunities. How much history playing four‑ball and foursomes? Just comment on the two formats as you experience them.

ANNABEL DIMMOCK: I played in the Girls and women's home international matches back home last year which is foursomes in the morning and then singles in the afternoon. So there's a lot of that. But we don't play that much match-play, really. But then once you turn pro, you don't really play match-play either apart from Solheim, obviously if you're lucky enough to get in.

But no, I really enjoy it because I really like being part of a team. I love it, so I enjoy that part of it.

What was your second question?

Q.  If you're playing alternate‑shot, you can destroy a friendship or build a friendship depending how it goes.

ANNABEL DIMMOCK: It's good to play with like a close friend in foursomes so that you almost don't feel obliged to say, "I'm sorry." Like that's the worst thing on the golf course; you shouldn't have to say that.

Yeah, I think the whole of our team is quite close

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Toughest decision I had to make was who not to play. With regards to who could play with who, quite honestly from top to bottom, I could have put any combination. With foursomes, I totally agree.

I think you need to be with someone you are absolutely comfortable with, and we had a big long discussion last night and the night before that, and we are in total agreement with who is going to be with who out there, and that's it.

Q. Did you let the players decide who they were most comfortable with?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Yeah, we did. We had a full open discussion. It's actually totally refreshing to me to have a team as brilliant as this that we could have that open conversation with, that no one was afraid to say what they felt or what they were more comfortable with.

Q. Why do you think that is?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: I don't know. It's kind of strange, because all these girls are young, so you would think it would be something that would come from more maturity, but no, not necessarily. Certainly wasn't the case in my day. You never said boo to a goose in my day; you did as you were told.

You know, that's the difference in life now. These girls are very confident, and they are very open, and I love all that. I love the fact that they can be. It makes my life an awful lot easier.

STEPHANIE MEADOW: I think we respect each other, too. We respect each other as great players, and it's not like, oh, I don't want to be with her.

ANNABEL DIMMOCK: There's no one on the team that you would be like, no, I don't want to be with them. Everyone is a good player here.
Q. You're probably more familiar with the American Team in some respects; is there someone that you didn't really know before this week that you were really impressed with their game at Atlanta Athletic Club that you could share with us?

STEPHANIE MEADOW: I didn't know Annabel at all. I don't think I ever saw her before. I was very impressed. She hits the ball great. She's a great player, good putter. It's nice to not know someone and then ‑‑ oh, she's good.

And also, Charlotte is over here, too, but I had never met her ‑‑ I had met her at national college tournaments but never seen her play before. Very steady, very accurate

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Two of our American college girls, Gemma and Charlotte, we had a discussion at dinner where they said, we have never, ever played with Steph who is also on the US women's circuit.

STEPHANIE MEADOW: It's weird. I don't know how many times we played through the season but a lot.

Q. Do you anticipate you'll have a player play in every session?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Yes, I do.

Q. And when you get to the Sunday singles, is that still a blind draw or do you ‑‑ when the captain's put together their lineup, that's blind; you rank your players and they rank the players. The Presidents Cup has gone I think to a format where the captains have actually informed decisions to make. Would you be in favor of a change of that sort, instead of just take whatever comes?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: Don't really know the answer to that. I'd have to sit down and think about the pros and cons to it. Don't really know.

I mean, I'm quite happy just putting the team in. I don't believe in the jigglyboo (ph). You can second guess me until doomsday, but I'm going to put people where I think they should be at any one time. I'm very lucky to have a team from top to bottom who are very good from top to bottom so I don't have to worry about strength at the top or strength at the bottom.

Q. The selection process?

TEGWEN MATTHEWS: I think it has been refreshing. I think it's provided complete clarity to the players in knowing what they needed to do to get onto the team, and to their parents and to the coaches and to the national organizations.           

CURTIS CUP PAST PLAYERS' GROUP AT ST LOUIS, MISSOURI

Curtis Cup past players' group at St Louis Country Club, Missouri for traditional pre-match competition. Back row (left to right): Mary McKenna, Pat Cornett, Bridget Jackson, Martha Kirouac, Lesley Shannon, Noreen Uihlein, Jane Booth, carol Semple Thompson, Mary Budke, Kellee Booth, Courtney (Swaim) Trimble
Front row: Elaine Farquharson-Black, Martha Lang, Robin Burke, Robin Weiss Donnelly.

FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN TO COMPETE IN MATCH

MARIAH STACKHOUSE WILL MAKE

GOLF HISTORY IN CURTIS CUP

FROM THE ESPN GOLF WEBSITE

By Farrell Evans | ESPN.com

A four-year-old black girl is watching the Golf Channel with her father. "Daddy when I get big," she says, "I'm going to be like that."

MARIAH STACKHOUSE. Picture by Donald Miralle/Getty Images

When Stanford University student Mariah Stackhouse tees it up for the United States in the Curtis Cup match tomorrow at St. Louis Country Club, Missouri she will become the first African-American woman to compete in the biennial contest against Great Britain and Ireland.
Even then Mariah Stackhouse could envision herself playing against the best amateur women golfers in the world. She was too young to know that at that time only three black women had ever held status on the LPGA Tour, an organization founded in 1950.
No one looked like little Mariah inside that TV.
Mariah's father, Ken Stackhouse, an architect, had tried to push his daughter into tennis, which had Venus and Serena Williams as powerful role models for black girls.
But little Mariah would develop into a golfer. She was 14 years old when she won the 2008 Georgia Women's Amateur, the youngest to ever capture that event in the 84-year history of the tournament.
Now, at the age of 20, Stackhouse, a Stanford sophomore, is making history again as the first African-American woman to compete in the Curtis Cup. 

Soon, aspiring four-year-old black female golfers could soon began seeing someone that looks like them regularly on golf telecasts.
"It's not my goal to ever be the first African-American to do something," said Stackhouse, who grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Riverdale. 
"I just want to be as good as I can be. But I also appreciate the fact that there might be some other African-American girl out there interested in golf and I can be a source of inspiration and show her that she shouldn't feel left out. 
"It always helps to see somebody like yourself doing something to make it believable. If I can inspire some other young girl, that makes me happy."
Black women have always played competitive golf, but their male counterparts have garnered most of the attention.
In 1956, Ann Gregory played in the U.S. Women's Amateur, becoming the first black woman to play in a USGA national championship. Following the end of her illustrious tennis career, Althea Gibson integrated the LPGA Tour in 1963. Four years later, Renee Powell joined the tour.
Then it would be another 28 years before another black woman, LaRee Sugg, competed on the LPGA Tour. After Sugg fell off the tour for good in 2001, another black woman didn't come along until Shasta Averyhardt earned conditional status in 2011.
In February, Cheyenne Woods, a niece of Tiger Woods, won the Australian Ladies Masters on the Ladies European Tour. But so far she has not qualified for the LPGA Tour. 
Presently, there are no black women on the game's leading women's pro tour.
Stackhouse has the potential to be better than all these pioneering women and the future of women's golf, igniting the growth of the game among groups that didn't previously view it as a viable option.
Through two seasons at Stanford, Stackhouse has already won four events, including the Peg Barnard Invitational at Stanford during her freshman year. In that event she flirted with a 59, shooting a 9-under 26 on the front nine en route to a course-record 10-under 61 at the Stanford Golf Course, setting an NCAA scoring record.

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Chan Reeves, the head of instruction at the Atlanta Athletic Club, has been Stackhouse's golf teacher since she was nine. When he initially balked at working with someone that age, believing she was too young, Stackhouse's dad convinced Reeves to work with his daughter by showing him the child's two-page résumé of tournaments.
"Mariah was just always ahead of things in terms of her development in the game," said Reeves, a former Georgia Tech golfer. "I worked on things with Mariah when she was 11 that I worked on with 13- and 14-year-olds. I think she could play the tour right now."
Yet Reeves is more impressed by Stackhouse as a person than he is with her prowess as a golfer.
"Mariah has always been well rounded," he said. "She's never been one that just did golf. She has a lot of friends and she is very social.
"Education is important for her and that's why she is at Stanford. She has two more years of college golf and there is no telling how good she is going to be."
Renee Powell, who played the LPGA through the late 1960s and 1970s, doesn't personally know Stackhouse, but there are few people in a better position than Powell to lend some perspective on this young woman.
In 1946, Powell's father, Bill Powell, built the Clearview Golf Course in East Canton, Ohio. The elder Powell, who died in 2009, was the first African-American to design, build and own a golf course in the United States.
Renee Powell got her start in the junior tournaments on the mostly-black United Golf Association, where she got to know Gregory as well as black male pros like Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder.
In 1962, when she was 16, Renee Powell became the first African-American girl to play in the U.S. Girls' Junior. And today, she is one of only two African-American female members out of 27,000 PGA of America professionals. The other one is Maulana Dotch, the head pro at the Cedar Crest Golf Course in Dallas.
Renee Powell believes that Stackhouse will be a great asset to the U.S. Curtis Cup team, but she is skeptical about the impact that her historic appearance could have on growing the game for minorities.
"Until the media starts doing more about women's golf, the public is not going to know much about African-American women golfers like Mariah," Powell said. 
"How are we going to get the word out that she is even playing in the Curtis Cup for the masses to see?"
Yet the 68-year-old Powell acknowledges the progress from her youth, when there were only a handful of golf courses in most major U.S. cities that were open to African-Americans. Still, she is frustrated that after 64 years, there have been only four black women to play on the LPGA Tour.
Powell remembers a time when the United Golf Association had junior programs at each member club to support rising black talent.
"We have made advancements, but not a whole lot of advancements," she said.
Stackhouse will carve her own path for both girls and African-Americans in the game by continuing on the journey that she started when she was still that little girl who planned to get inside that TV. The Curtis Cup match is another step in that direction. She has gained extensive match play experience through the Georgia State Golf Association and various other outlets that have prepared her well for the matches in St. Louis.
"My goal is to not just have played on the tour, but to be a great professional," Stackhouse said. "I want to be the best in the world one day.
"I have two more years in college and I want to make the most of it. I need to step up my work ethic so that when I graduate, I am giving myself the best opportunity to go for my dreams."
In March, Stackhouse demonstrated her commitment to college golf by turning down one of the 10 amateur exemptions to play in the Kraft Nabisco Championship, an LPGA Tour major. She chose instead to play in a collegiate event that conflicted with the tour event. Her decision was not surprising to her father.
"We never really talked about professional golf growing up," Ken Stackhouse said. "Our main goal that we stuck to was to get her good enough to get a high quality education and the golf skills that would allow her to compete at the professional level if that's what she chose to do.
"The emphasis has always been on school and I know that she won't leave school early to pursue professional golf."
When Stackhouse does make that leap, the women's game will be ready to warmly embrace her cheerfulness and strong game. She will be a big enough star to easily fit inside any TV.

STAFFORDSHIRE PLAYER;S BID TO EMULATE CHRIS QUINN

  Julie Brown bids for English senior title double

Staffordshire’s Julie Brown will bid for a rare double when she tees up in the English senior women’s stroke play championship at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, from June 17-19.
Julie (Trentham, Image © Leaderboard Photography), won the English senior women’s amateur at her first attempt in April. Now, she will attempt to follow in the footsteps of Hampshire’s Chris Quinn (Hockley), who is the only player so far to win both titles in the same season, achieving the feat in 2009.
The championship will also decide the England team for the European senior ladies’ team championship, which will be played in Austria in early September. The top six players on the senior order of merit after the strokeplay will make up the side.
At the moment, those places are held by Julie Brown, Chris Quinn, Debbie Richards of Surrey, Katherine Russell of Sussex, Lulu Housman of Middlesex, and by Janet Melville of Lancashire and Jane Southcombe of Dorset, who currently share sixth place. All are in the field at Knaresborough.
Among the others in the hunt are Cheshire’s Sue Dye, who is defending the title she won last year at Shanklin and Sandown on the Isle of Wight, where she scored a runaway seven-shot victory. The championship has attracted a strong field which includes 13 Yorkshire players, among them the county vets’ champion, Carolyn Kirk of Ganton, and the runner-up, Pat Wrightson of Huddersfield. Knaresborough will be represented by two players, Brenda Moore and Bridget Tasker.
Other players from the host county are Jackie Barraclough (East Bierley), Judy Butler and Carol Simpson (both Malton and Norton), Jo Davy (Ganton), Helen Duckett (Sand Moor), Laraine Hague (Scarborough North Cliff), Karen Jobling (Richmond), Sandra Paul (Huddersfield) and Hilary Smyth (Pannal).
The championship will be played over 54 holes. The full field will play 18 holes on each of Tuesday and Wednesday, June 17 and 18. The top 36 players and ties will qualify for the final 18 holes on Thursday June 19.

Lyndsey Hewison
Press Officer
England Golf
pr@englandgolf.org
07825 752 193