NORTH Berwick Golf Club has marked its association with Catriona Matthew by renaming one of its lounges after the double-winning European Solheim Cup captain.
Catriona, who has been a member of the club since the age of 12 and who was given lifetime membership in 2019, guided the European team to its second successive Solheim Cup win in September, becoming only the third captain to achieve the feat and the first European to do the double.
Earlier this month, the 2009 Women’s Open champion cut the ribbon on the club’s former East Lounge, which has also been decorated with storyboards of her career achievements and photos of her winning moments.
Catriona said: “I am very honoured to receive this accolade from the club and it will feel amazing to have the lounge named after me.
“As a local girl, I have spent so many hours playing and practising on the West Links, and it holds a very special place in my heart.
“The course and the town itself are places that golfers all over the world have fallen in love with and it’s nice to be synonymous with such a fantastic club.
“Hopefully I can continue to inspire more young girls in Scotland to take up golf and go on to enjoy the game for life, whether as a member of their own local club or to play on the national and international stage. The profile and stature of the women’s game is growing all the time and recognising the achievements of female golfers can only help encourage more women to get involved in our wonderful sport.”
Elaine McBride, club general manager, said the club wanted to celebrate Catriona’s career and its connection with her in a way that was “not too ostentatious”.
She said: “We bestowed lifetime membership on Catriona but wanted to do a little bit more, to recognise all her achievements, and she’s got such a longstanding connection with the club.
“We wanted to find an everlasting legacy in the clubhouse to show Catriona’s journey through her amateur and professional career, and the successes she’s had with the Solheim Cup, and that’s where the storyboard idea came from.
“We wanted something not too ostentatious or in-your-face because Catriona’s quite an unassuming individual, she’s very humble, very down-to-earth, and we wanted whatever we did in that room to be representative of her personality.
“She’s got such a strong connection with the club; it’s where she grew up, it’s where she played golf firstly on what was the kids’ course, her family have got a strong connection, her house overlooks the 18th tee and 17th green, she’s a big part of the town, and she does an awful lot to help support the club.”
As an amateur, Catriona won the Scottish Girls Match Play and Stroke Play Championships, before claiming victory in the Scottish Ladies Amateur Championship three times, as well as winning the British Women’s Amateur title in 1993. She made the move to pro a year later and claimed her maiden professional title at the 1996 Australian Women’s Open.
Still competing on the LPGA Tour and Ladies European Tour, Catriona also mentors North Berwick teenager Grace Crawford, who earlier this year won the club’s Ladies Championship aged 14.
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