After a challenging two days’ play at Goswick Links, Lindrick’s Holly Morgan won the Women’s PGA Professional Championship, whilst Holly Haslam (Stock Brook Manor Golf & Country Club), took the Women’s PGA Assistants’ Championship title at the same venue.
Rounds of 76 and 74 saw Morgan take the main trophy in very difficult conditions: “It feels amazing, I honestly didn’t expect to win it,” she said. “I missed too many fairways yesterday but apart from that I did play quite well and then today I decided I’m not going to hit my driver at all and played very conservative, but as it happens it was the right thing to do.
“It’s actually the first time I’ve ever played in this event so it was really nice to come and play two rounds of golf as opposed to one, and everybody’s so nice, it’s such a friendly environment to be in and I had my mum on the bag who keeps me calm, so it’s been brilliant.”
PGA Trainee Haslam’s rounds of 74 and 73 secured her the silverware: “I’m over the moon to win – I can’t believe it, I’m super happy. I didn’t expect it, but I was going to do my best and just see where I could go. I’ve been playing all right, so it just had to all come together at the right time and today was the right time.
“Yesterday I played quite nice golf, one bad hole really, but kept myself right in the mix, and today I had a terrible start but settled down, got some momentum going, made a couple of birdies and had a steady finish. Overall a really amazing week, really good fun.”
During the tournament, there were also two Great Britain and Ireland team spots up for grabs for fully qualified PGA Professionals for the 2024 Women’s PGA Cup, to be held at Sunriver Resort in Oregon in October.
The qualification process meant that points from both the 2023 and 2024 championships would determine the team members, with Holly Morgan and Heather MacRae (The Gleneagles Hotel) making the team.
Both players had their eyes on the qualification spots with MacRae adding: “I’m very excited – it’s been my goal since I played in the last WPGA Cup – it was one of the best golf weeks of my life so I wanted to make sure I was on the team again. Today was a bit of a struggle but I managed to get it done so I’m super happy.”
2024 WPGA Cup Captain, Cathy Panton-Lewis, was thrilled with her first two team members, saying: “It’s great – two of the very best players that we have, so it’s a great relief to have such very good players on the team already. Holly went to college in America for a year, so she’s not going to be too much of a newbie playing in America, and Heather had a great WPGA Cup two years ago, so it makes my life a bit easier. We’ve got two more events in the WPGA Series so that gives me another couple of events to see how the land’s lying, who’s in form and who’s doing well.”
The final WPGA Cup team will be made up of five players – the top two from the 2023 and 2024 WPGA Series points list will join Morgan and MacRae, then Panton-Lewis will make one Captain’s Pick to finalise the team.
See the final Women’s PGA Professional and Assistants’ Championship scores HERE.