Strong Irish side for Espirito Santo trip

Paula Grant joins Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow on the plane to Turkey for the Espirito Samto Trophy later this month. Picture via ILGUThe Irish Ladies Golf Union is sending a strong team to compete in this month’s Women’s World Amateur Team Championships in Turkey.

British Amateur champion Stephanie Meadow, 2011 British Strokeplay champion Leona Maguire and international stalwart Paula Grant will play for the Women’s Espirito Santo Trophy at the Gloria Golf Resort in Antalya September 27-30 with Monkstown’s Ada O’Sullivan as captain .

The Championship is being played over the old and new courses at the Gloria Golf Club and Ireland will be looking to improve on their 2010 final placing after Leona and Lisa Maguire and Danielle McVeigh finished 11th in Buenos Aires.

That marked Ireland’s best solo finish in the event having helped GB&I achieve two silver and five bronze medals during the years when the Home Countries fielded a combined team.

The biennial championship, organised by the International Golf Federation, was first held in 1964 and recent tournaments have featured teams from upwards of forty countries.

It is a strokeplay event, in which the best two individual scores from three count on each of the four days. For the first three decades it was dominated by the United States, but recent results have reflected the increasing globalisation of women’s golf, with six different winners in six events from 1996 to 2006.

More recently, teams from Asia have come to the fore and once again South Korea are strong favourites having won by a whopping 17 strokes last time out.