THE MAKING OF A CHAMPION: Stephanie's Mum and Dad

    PROUD PARENTS: Robert and Louise Meadow with their champion daughter Stephanie. Image by Cal Carson Golf Agency.

By COLIN FARQUHARSON

Colin@scottishgolfview.com
Stephanie Meadow, 20-year-old Royal Portrush GC member and impressive winner of the British women's open amateur golf championship at Carnoustie on Saturday afternoon, is on her way today to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the United States Women's Open championship which tees off at Blackwolf Run GC on Thursday.
Victory at Carnoustie over 19-year-old Rocio Sanchez Lobato from Marbella by 4 and 3 in a nine-birdie final that was great golf at the gallop - it lasted only 2hr 45min - gave US-based Meadow, who is a student at the University of Alabama, an automatic place in the US Women's Open.
The difference between last year's fiasco when Lauren Taylor (Woburn) became the youngest ever British women's open amateur champion at Royal Portrush is that there was no dubiety this time about whether the prize place in the US Women's Open was for this year or next.
Twelve months ago Rugby-based Lauren and her parents were under the impression that the prize for their daughter was a place in the 2012 US Women's Open, not in the 2011 event which, as is the case for Stephanie Meadow, would have meant a frantic dash from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
But the Meadows live in the States - have done so since 2006 - so getting back to America and hotfooting it up to Milwaukee in time for a practice round is no real problem for folks who know their way around the States.
Stephanie's win, which means that Royal Portrush members hold both the men's and women's British amateur titles (Alan Dunbar won the men's title at Royal Troon the week before last, also earned her exemption from qualifying for the Ricoh Women;s British Open at Hoylake in September.
Robert and Louise Meadow were proud parents at Carnoustie on Saturday as their 20-year-old daughter, 20th in the World amateur rankings, stepped up to receive the trophy which was first contested in 1893 and has some of the most famous female amateur golfers inscribed down through the years ... including the legendary Babe Zaharias, who came over from America to win it at Gullane just after World War II.
The Meadows realised their daughter had star quality when the family home was Jordanstown near Belfast and Stephanie reached the final of the Irish girls match-play championship in 2004 before she was even in her teens - and won that same title in 2006.
They decided that if they moved the family home to America, then Stephanie's progress in golf would speeded up and enhanced at the same time.
A retired financial director with a group of companies, Robert told me at Carnoustie on Saturday:
"We asked a lot of people's advice about the move and how it would affect Steph personally, especially her headmaster at Belfast High School because we worried about what it might do to her education if we uprooted her from from system and put her into another completely different one, in the States.
"He told us that we should go ahead with the plan because, he said, Steph was/is a very smart girl who would adjust quickly to a new life ... and he was right.
"We emigrated to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina (which is where we still live, about an eight-hour drive to Tuscaloosa, where Steph's campus at the University of Alabama is.
"We enrolled Steph at the Hank Hainey International Junior Golf Academy at Hilton Head Island and she has received top level coaching and the use of first-class facilities ever since, continuing both when she moved to the University of Alabama two years ago."