England looking to go one better in the Ladies Home Internationals at Downfield

ENGLAND’S women’s team will be looking to go one better than last year when they finished runners-up to Scotland in the Ladies Home Internationals, at Ballybunion, in Ireland.

The Home Internationals get under way when England face Wales at Downfield Golf Club, in Scotland, on Wednesday.

They will then face the Auld Enemy on Thursday before facing the last of their Home Nations opponents, Ireland, on Friday.

The selectors have a strong array of talent at their disposal , and have named Women’s Amateur Champion Emily Toy in their seven-strong squad.

Toy is joined by Hertfordshire’s current English Women’s Amateur Champion Ellen Hume, and the player she beat – her predecessor Lily May Humphreys – who has won three big titles aleady in 2019 – in the team that travelled north of the border, earlier this week.

Even without Roehampton’s Fuller sisters or Berkhamsted’s Alice Hewson, the recent winner of the European Amateur Championship, England can go into their matches with Wales, Ireland and hosts Scotland with every confidence.

Twenty-one-year-old Toy claimed the biggest title of her career at the Women’s Amateur Championship at Royal Co. Down, in June, where she beat New Zealand’s Amelia Garvey in the final.

The member at Cornwall’s Carlyon Bay also won the New South Wales Amateur Championship, in Australia, at the start of the year and been flying ever since.

Debutant Hume won her English crown at Sauntion and has also won the West of England Championship – and the Faldo Series’ England Girls’ Championship – this summer.

Essex ace Humphreys, a member at Stoke-by-Nayland, claimed the Welsh and Irish Strokeplay titles in May, and the Annika Invitational Europe.

Humphreys played in last year’s Home Internationals and has since represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Vagliano Trophy at Royal St George’s, as well as for England at the European Ladies’ Team Championship, in July.

Cheshire’s Isobel Wardle won this season’s Comboy Leveret and was second at the Welsh Ladies’ Open Strokeplay,

The 19-year-old, from Prestbury GC, reached the quarter-final at the English Women’s Amateur and the last 16 at the Women’s Amateur.

Wardle was also third at the St Rule Trophy, fourth at the Portuguese International Ladies’ and fifth at the Spanish International in the early part of the season.

Somerset’s Mimi Rhodes reached the quarter-final of the Women’s Amateur, and was eighth in the German Girls’ Open as well as ninth in the Annika Invitational Europe.

The 17-year-old represented England in the European Girls’ Team Championship last month, where she was fourth in the individual competition.

Rhodes, a member at Burnham and Berrow, was part of the winning English team in last year’s Girls’ Home Internationals, in Ireland.

Leicstershire’s Lianna Bailey, won the 2018 St Rule Trophy at St Andrews and finished second in the same event this year.

The 22-year-old, from Kirby Muxloe GC, represented England in this year’s European Team Championship.

Bailey was also a member of the team that finished runners-up to Scotland in the 2018 Women’s Home Internationals in Ireland.

Norfolk’s Amelia Williamson won the Chiberta Grand Prix, in France, in July, and was third at the Critchley Astor Salver, at Sunningdale.

The 19-year-old, from Royal Cromer GC, was seventh at the Dutch International Junior Open.

She followed that up by sharing 11th place behind Hewson at the European Amateur at Parkstone.

Williamson was also part of the winning English team at last year’s Girls’ Home International.

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