Scottish Women's Amateur Championship
ELAINE Moffat, a three-handicap player from St Regulus, struck a blow for spare-time golfers when she won the Scottish Women's Amateur Championship against all the odds at North Berwick.
In an unexpected final between two three-handicap players, Moffat (30) beat Caroline Agnew, a 22-year-old unemployed law graduate, by 4 and 3, scoring 13 pars, one birdie, and a bogey.
Many pointed out that the winner did not have to meet an internationalist in any of her five matches. However, that was just the luck of the draw.
Although Moffat, a straight hitter with a good short game, was an out-of-the-blue winner at the end of a week of form upsets, it would be unthinkable for the selectors to leave the Scottish champion out of the Scotland team of eight for the women's home internationals at Burnham and Berrow in September.
One thing is certain, she will not be included when the Great Britain and Ireland team to defend the Curtis Cup in Minneapolis on August 1 and 2 is announced at the conclusion of the British Women's Amateur Championship at Little Aston, Sutton Coldfield, from June 9 to 13.
Paradoxically, four Scots who did not even make the quarter-finals at North Berwick - Alison Rose (Stirling) and Heriot Watt University students Hilary Monaghan, Lesley Nicholson, and Anne Laing - are on the Curtis Cup short leet.
In fact, for the first time in many years, the new Scottish champion will not be competing in the Sutton Coldfield event, which always follows three weeks later.
The reason is that Moffat did not anticipate her national triumph and did not enter the ''British,'' the major event on the women's amateur golf calendar.
''I'm a once-a-week golfer and I had to use a week's holiday from work to play in the Scottish championship, so I never even thought about sending off an entry for the British Championship before the deadline,'' said Moffat.
''I'm astonished and delighted that I won the Scottish title but I don't think it will change my life. I'm playing in the big tournament this coming weekend, the St Rule Trophy, because I was brought up in St Andrews and I am a member of the St Regulus club. After that, the big event for me is the East Division women's county team championship.''
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