A quartet of aspiring PGA professionals have made history by becoming the first women's only team to become World Student Matchplay Champions.
The four girls, who are undergraduates on the PGA/University of Birmingham Honours Degree in Applied Golf Management Studies, battled it out against 26 men's and mixed university teams from across the world to make the final in Munich and beat the home favourites.
The University Golf Club, who are sponsored by Kalamazoo-Reynolds, had already broken two records back in the qualifying round in March when they boasted the first ever women's only team to qualify for the event, as well as being the first university to have two teams qualify.
Lucy Williams, Sian James, Charlotte Hope and Lauren Spray progressed though the first round after playing 18 holes of stroke play and achieving the lowest aggregate score - three strokes ahead of the University of Manchester men's team.
The girls led the qualifiers into the matchplay semi-final, where they met another men's team; local rivals University of Warwick.
Wins by Hope, Williams and James in the singles strokeplay took the girls sailing through to the final of foursomes 18 hole matchplay against home team Erlangen-Nurnberg.
With all tournament competitors watching the pressure was on but James and Spray won the first match on the 18th hole, leaving Williams and Hope to tie things up by winning their match and securing the historical championship title.
Williams said: "We are so ecstatic about our success in Munich, we couldn't have asked for a better week!
"Being the only girls team in the tournament was really exciting and it made us really determined to show all the boys that the girls could compete with them.
"We worked so well as a team and enjoyed every minute of the final, especially as our boys from the other Birmingham team were caddying for us!
"We haven't been able to wipe the smiles off our faces all the way back to England!"
The AGMS degree is now in its eighth year of entry and combines a multi-disciplinary approach in subjects such as sports-science, psychology, business management, material science and equipment technology while summer placement modules at golf clubs help cement club repair, coaching and retail skills.
03 July, 2009