Dame Laura Davies became the first winner of the US Women’s Senior Open title in mid-July and is looking to add another chapter to her golfing success story in the Ricoh Women’s British Open this week at Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf Club.
Davies is making a remarkable 38th consecutive appearance in the championship, having made her debut as a 16-year-old amateur over the East Course at Wentworth in 1980, where she missed the cut. This will be her fifth appearance at Royal Lytham, which previously hosted the championship in 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009.
She won the title at Royal Birkdale in 1986, before it became a Major in 2001 and says that Lytham “is a course I love, I really do. I think it’s great. Every hole is different.”
At 54, Davies is still breaking new ground and following her recent 10 stroke victory at the Chicago Golf Club, she is calling for a Senior Women’s British Open to be added to the rota.
Last week, the Senior Open Championship was played on the Old Course at St Andrews and she said that a women’s equivalent would be “brilliant.”
“I think it’s the obvious thing that hopefully should happen, and maybe it will happen one day. But we’ll just have to wait and see. I think the USGA has set the target now. I think everyone enjoyed that tournament, because the galleries were good, so they obviously voted with their feet, they came out and watched it, so there’s a real future for it.”
Britain’s most decorated golfer, whose victory at the US Senior Open was her 85th career win and who was made a Dame in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, thinks it’s important that the women’s Open continues to be played on the world’s leading championship courses.
“Obviously I won it in ’86 at Birkdale and then we went to Woburn and then all of a sudden we started playing the links rotation, which I think made the golf tournament what it is now. The more times we play on the great links courses, the better it is, because that’s what the British Open is all about.
“Ricoh has taken this tournament to the next level. Weetabix originally did a great job, which Richard George and his family supported for so many years. Whoever the new sponsor is going to be, they’ve got a tough act to follow, because literally it’s grown and grown. So if you’re a company looking for a standard bearing event, this is the one.”
Total prize money for the 2018 Ricoh Women’s British Open is $3.25 million, which is paid out to all professionals who make the cut. The winner of the fourth women’s Major will take home $490,000.
