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Championship History
"The Ladies Irish Open - Where It All Began..."
On the evening of July 31st 1994, Laura Davies left Dublin and headed home to her cottage in Surrey. She had just claimed the 30th tournament victory of her professional career, which was precisely what everybody had expected her to do. But more importantly, through an eight-stroke victory at St Margaret's, she had launched, almost single-handedly, a new phase in the development of women's professional golf on this island.
Though the Irish Ladies Open has been absent from the Ladies European Tour's schedule since its last staging in 2004, it will be returning next July to Portmarnock Links as a consequence of a five-year deal which also involves the staging of the Solheim Cup at Killeen Castle, Co Meath, in 2011. In considering the anticipated impact of these developments more than a decade on from that July evening, the name of Laura Davies jumps to the forefront of our minds, once more.
So, Alison Nicholas will forgive us if her choice as captain of the Solheim Cup team for Chicago in 2009 was welcomed here, not for the obvious reasons. For the hope is that when the biennial event comes to Ireland two years later, Laura must now be a clear frontrunner for the captaincy. Which is what the organisers at Killeen Castle secretly desired when they secured the event towards the end of 2006.
Nicholas, the 1997 US Women's Open champion, has paid her dues as a distinguished member of victorious Solheim Cup teams and as vice captain in 2003 and 2005. And she also won the Irish Open by a sparkling eight strokes on her debut in the event at City West in 1996. Indeed it proved to be her last European success.
Interestingly, her presence there was greatly influenced by Davies, her Solheim Cup partner, who had been Irish Open champion in the previous two years. And Nicholas proved her worth with an 11-under-par aggregate of 277, which included a course-record 65 on the Saturday. Davies, who conceded second place to Trish Johnson by a double-bogey at the last, said of the newly-crowned champion: "I told her it was a great tournament."
Another fascinating performance that weekend came from a young Englishwoman named Allison Shapcott, who carded four birdies to match the winner's final round of 70. Indeed Shapcott claimed £2,838 for a share of seventh place, five months before her marriage to Paul McGinley who, incidentally, earned no prize money that week, having opted out of the Dutch Open.
Meanwhile Davies, who was born on October 5th 1963, seems determined to continue her playing career. And it would be difficult to blame her, given earnings of $684,000 on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour in the US this year and a victory last August in the SAS Masters in Norway - her first anywhere in over two years.
But she will be nudging 46 by the time the next Solheim Cup comes around and obviously, much will depend on her form in the run up to Chicago. Either way, it seems a safe bet at this stage that the player who did more than anybody to revive women's tournament golf in this country, will be the Solheim Cup captain in Ireland.
All of which brings me back to a weekend at Woodbrook in October 1993. That was when a remarkable attendance of more than 5,000 turned up on a Saturday for the Ford Challenge, which was little more than a modest, 18-hole event. In such circumstances, the public response staggered the sponsors and lent rich emphasis to the tradition of women supporting their own game, given a reasonably attractive product. On that occasion at Woodbrook, they certainly showed themselves to be far more committed than their male counterparts would ever be.
As it happened, things could hardly have gone better for the two-day tournament, with the weather being unusually kind for that time of year. And the quality of play matched the benign conditions with Sweden's Carin Hjalmarsson, then a relatively raw, 22-year-old, setting the target in the individual event with a seven-under-par 67. Long and strong, she confirmed the promise of the previous year when she joined Davies in the last round of the English Open.
Her Woodbrook effort meant that Davies, everybody's favourite, needed to cover the last three holes in one under par for victory, one month after retaining her British Open crown. Pars on the long 16th and short 17th meant that everything hinged on her play of the treacherous, 348-yard 18th, with the notorious railway-line beckoning on the right.
In the event, she hit a two iron downwind off the tee, sending the ball 210 yards safely up the middle of the fairway. Then came a 136-yard wedge to set up the winning birdie. With a stunning 66, she had beaten Hjalmarsson by a stroke. And an indication of the overall quality of the field can be gleaned from the fact that Corinne Dibnah was third, followed by a particularly interesting quartet on 69 _ five under par.
They were Dale Reid, Catriona Lambert, the same Allison Shapcott who was to become Mrs Paul McGinley three years later, and a promising young Swede by the name of Annika Sorenstam. There's one for the quiz table: when did Annika Sorenstam compete in this country? I suspect even the more enlightened followers of the game would be surprised to discover that it happened in modest circumstances at Woodbrook. Meanwhile, an appropriate Irish flavour was added to the leaderboard by the presence on 70 of Maureen Garner, who has since become a highly respected on-course commentator with the BBC television golf team.
In the team section of the tournament, which had been held the previous day, victory went to the then 19-year-old from Bristol, Caroline Hall, who led her amateur partners to a sparkling score of 130 - 18 under par - for a winning margin of two strokes. Victory was sealed by remarkable figures on the 18th when Hall's team had a combined score of only five, which was the product of a net eagle two by former Munster Interprovincial Mary Dowling and a net birdie by Marion Cleary from Royal Tara.
The success of this pro-am section reflected much credit on the professionals who happily agreed to play without cash reward. Their big event came on Saturday which carried a fund of £25,000. Significantly, Australia's Karen Lunn remarked: "We are prepared to do this in the hope it will lead to bigger things."
It certainly did, to the extent that the LET (then the WPG) eventually succeeded in establishing a long-awaited foothold in the Republic. In came the following July in the form of the £70,000 Women's Irish Holidays Open and was played at the relatively new St Margaret's stretch, close by Dublin Airport. This was almost 10 years after the previous staging of the event at Clandeboye, where it was held on October 10th to 13th 1984, with a stunning prize fund of £Stg100,000 under the Smirnoff banner.
As it happened, victory went to the American veteran, Kathy Whitworth, who had celebrated her 45th birthday the previous month. It was her 87th and last tournament win and she beat a distinguished field in which Pat Bradley was tied second, Donna Caponi was tied fourth and Jan Stephenson and Betsy King were tied ninth. And an indication of the size of the prize fund was that Whitworth's winning cheque of £22,500 was considerably greater than the £18,330 which Bernhard Langer collected as Irish (men's) Open Champion at Royal Dublin in August of that year.
When the tournament was revived at St Margaret's victory went, as I have indicated, to the irrepressible Davies who crushed the opposition with rounds of 70,72,69 and 71 for a six-under-par aggregate of 282. And there were resonances of Woodbrook the previous October when Hjalmarsson again finished second, this time in a tie with Helen Wadsworth. Hall was tied fourth.
By her own estimation, it was a very important victory for Davies in that it maintained her record of at least one win per season on the European Tour over a period of 10 years. But as we will discover in the revived Irish Open next July, she had flown the women's golf flag here, to lasting effect.
Dermot Gilleece
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