Tain all teed up for a female invasion
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Entry forms for the 2012 Scottish Women’s Golf Championship, to be played over the Tain Golf Course from May 15-19, are now available to download from the Scottish Ladies Golf Association website.
The entry form, accompanied by the entry fee of £40, must be submitted to the SLGA by Monday, April 16th. Entries into the field of 132 will be accepted from holders of a handicap below 20.4 which should allow for a big North presence.
The format of the competition is 36 holes of qualifying from which the top 32 progress into match-play for the title.
The next 16 scratch qualifiers play in a second flight of match-play for the Clark Rose bowl and in addition during the qualifying rounds there are county and club team events.
All in all, it should be a great week not only for the local members but for the many visiting golfers the competition will bring to Tain, not just to take part but also to enjoy this fine Old Tom Morris golf course. The club is still reaping the rewards from staging the Scottish Girls’ championship in 2005 and club secretary Maggie Vass, in her first full year as secretary is already gearing up for a busy year ahead.
Vass, who was previously a part time assistant to club secretary Joanna Bell, was appointed to the full post of secretary on the retiral of Bell at the end of last season. Vass’s appointment continues a long family connection with the club, her father Willie Russell a past captain and serving secretary at the time of the club’s Centenary in 1990.
The Russell family will be prominent competitors when the "Scottish" arrives. The golfing attributes of daughters Mary Smith and Anne Ryan and grand-daughter Sammy Vass are well documented, Mary and Anne now becoming fixtures in the Scottish senior team.
In the run up to the championship Maggie Vass will have several meetings with the SLGA Championship manager Claire Hargan, to ensure everything is in place but on the eve of play she hopes to be speeding her way to Glasgow so that she can pick up her daughter Sammy and bring her home to Tain in time to tee off.
By May, Sammy will be coming to the end of a third term attending the Gardner Webb College in North Carolina and "it will be touch and go if she makes it home" said her mother last week.
"It will depend on how her college golf team are doing on the US college circuit. She managed to make it back for last year’s championship at Machrihanish after I collected her at Glasgow Airport and drove her straight to the course.
"But at least if I have to do the same this year she won’t be teeing off on a course she does not know"
Tain is also staging the men’s North of Scotland championship this year at the end of August so that will mean more work for their long serving head greenkeeper Ian McLeod and his staff.
Two of the feature holes, the 11th the Alps and the 16th Kelag, remain virtually unchanged from when the then St. Duthus Golf Club founding members chose the best and most renowned planner of the period, Old Tom Morris, to come to Tain and set out their course.
The Alps hole still retains its two guarding hills from where the hole derived its name but Kelag has a completely different obstacle. Where the River Tain has to be crossed from the tee it is tidal and at full tide water can surround the green on three sides, hence the hole becoming an aquatic terror.
