Have YOU entered the Hacienda del Alamo Women's Festival yet?

ABERDEENSHIRE GIRLS CHAMPION LAUREN MacCALLUM
PUTS NAME DOWN FOR HACIENDA
DEL ALAMO FESTIVAL

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Tournament Controller
It's been a very good golf year for Lauren MacCallum - and the 17-year-old McDonald Ellon Golf Club member and Loretto Golf Academy pupil is determined that 2008 will be even better!
That's why she has entered two competitions in the first week of the inaugural Hacienda del Alamo Women's Festival at the five-star golf resort in the Murcia region of south-east Spain.
That's the 36-hole curtain-raising stroke-play on Monday and Tuesday, February 10 and 11 followed by an 18-hole competition, again over the Dave Thomas-designed championship course at Hacienda del Alamo on Thursday, February 14.
When she's not playing, Lauren will be taking advantage of the five-star practice facilities at HDA - a six-hole Academy course of par-3s and par-4s, a 36-bay driving range, a bunker practice area and two huge practice greens, one for putting and the other for pitching and chipping.
Lauren will fly home with her mum and dad, Catriona and Willie, and 14-year-old sister Kirsten on the Friday.
That's one of the beauties of this Festival which is open to Lady professionals and Lady amateurs with handicaps of nine and under. You can arrive when you like and you can leave when you like within the February 10 to 23 dates.
In 2007, Lauren won the St Andrews Girls' Open Quaich tournament at St Andrews, beating Kristy Simpson (Murrayfield) by 3 and 1 in the final over the Old Course. One of the highlights of the final was big-hitting Lauren driving her ball off the 18th tee into the Valley of Sin in front of the green, which is a long ball indeed.
Lauren also won the Paul Lawrie girls' match-play title as well as the Aberdeenshire girls' championship at Peterculter.
Her only disappointment in 2007 was being left out of the SLGA squads for winter training, especially as she had been a member in 2006-2007 and had such a good season in 2007!
But that has made Lauren only more determined to do well in 2008.
One of her targets will be the Scottish schoolgirls championship to be held at a course in her area - Inchmarlo Golf Centre. And as a sequel to that, a place in the Scotland team for the schools international against England at Royal Lytham & St Annes later in the season.
A couple of years ago at St Andrews Bay (as it was then), Lauren won the handicap trophy in the Scottish schoolgirls championship over the Torrance Course.