Elizabeth Earnshaw to chair EGWA

operational board in 2010

NEWS RELEASE ISSUED BY ENGLISH WOMEN'S GOLF ASSOCIATION
Warwickshire’s Elizabeth Earnshaw is to be the 2010 chairman of the operational board of the English Women’s Golf Association (EWGA). She will take on the role in January, having spent the past two years as the association’s president.
During this time she has also represented EWGA in talks with the English Golf Union about a possible merger of the two organisations. Elizabeth commented on her appointment: “I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to take on another role with the association. “As president I have been invited to attend operational board meetings and look forward to building on progress already made and to the interesting challenges ahead.”
The operational board looks after the core golfing activities of the association and its members include the chairmen of EWGA’s six regions. Altogether, EWGA represents over 115,000 women and girls in 1780 golf clubs.
Elizabeth is one of the best known figures in women’s golf, having enjoyed a long and varied career in the administration of the game. She is a past chairman of the former English Ladies’ Golf Association and of the Ladies Golf Union (LGU), and helped create today’s unified handicapping system for men and women.
She also chaired the rules and regulations committees of both organisations and was the first LGU representative on the R&A Rules of Golf committee. Elizabeth became one of the first two women to referee at The Open, at St Andrews in 1995.
She was also the first British women to referee at The Masters, in 1997, and has been on duty at two further Open championships, at the Women’s British Open and at all the top women’s amateur tournaments.
In 2001, she was made an OBE for her services to golf and she is an honorary member of both Ladbrook Park Golf Club and the Warwickshire Ladies’ County Golf Association.Elizabeth began her golf as a member at Barrow Golf Club in Cumbria, before moving to London where she joined Royal Mid-Surrey and Hampstead.
She moved to Warwickshire in 1974 and has been a member at Ladbrook Park since then. She is a past captain of the Warwickshire second team and made occasional outings for the first team. Elizabeth has a handicap of 14 and has been as low as four.
Elizabeth will succeed Margaret Berriman of Berkshire, who will complete her one-year term as operational board chairman at the EWGA annual meeting on January 13.
Lyndsey Hewison
Press & PR Officer