Sally Watson loses to a boy in Leadbetter

Academy match-play tourney final

Curtis Cup player Sally Watson lost to a boy in the final of the inaugural David Leadbetter Golf Academy match-play tournament this week (on Monday) at the IMG Academies Country Club, Florida.
The 17-year-old from Edinburgh, a resident student at the academy at Bradenton, Florida, lost by 3 and 2 to Michael Chen, both players playing around 108 holes each in the three-day competition which started with a field of 64 boys and girls.
The boys played off the back tees - a course of some 6,900yd - the girls from more forward tees, a course of 6,300yd. It was a scratch tournament with a random draw.
Sally beat three boys en route to the final but Chen went four up after seven holes with the help of a hat-trick of birdies and Sally, though she played very well, could not pull him back even though she was eight under par for the last 32 holes she played!
Sally, a contender for the GB&I team for the Vagliano Trophy match in Hamburg in July and also the Scotland line-up for the European women's team championship at Bled, Slovenia, earlier that month, not to mention the European team for the Junior Solheim Cup match at Aurora, Illinois on August 18-19, returns to this country to play in the British women's open amateur championship at Royal St David's Golf Club, Harlech in North Wales from June 9 to 13.
She will return to America to play in the United States women's amateur championship - players in last year's Curtis Cup match at St Andrews are exempt from taking part in the qualifying competitions - and again in late August to enrol at Stanford University, California.