Women's world champions make history

A group of golfers have made history by becoming the first women’s only team to qualify and become World Student Matchplay Champions.

The University of Birmingham Sport students travelled to Inglostadt, Munich where they battled it out against twenty-six men’s and mixed university teams from all over the world to make the final and beat the home favourites.

The University broke two records back in the qualifying round in March when they boasted the first ever women’s only team to qualify for the event, as well as being the first university to have two teams qualify.

Lucy Williams, Sian James, Charlotte Hope and Lauren Spray progressed though the first round after playing 18 holes of stroke play and achieving the lowest aggregate score. Three strokes ahead of the University of Manchester men's team, the girls led the qualifiers into the matchplay semi-final, where they met another men’s team; local rivals University of Warwick.

Wins by Charlotte, Lucy and Sian in the singles strokeplay took the girls sailing through to the final of foursomes 18 hole matchplay against home team Erlangen-Nurnberg.

With all tournament competitors watching the pressure was on but Sian and Lauren won the first match on the 18th hole, leaving Lucy and Charlotte to tie things up winning their match and securing the historical championship title.

Captain Lucy Williams, speaking on behalf of the team was clearly thrilled with the result; “We are so ecstatic about our success in Munich, we couldn’t have asked for a better week! Being the only girls team in the tournament was really exciting and it made us really determined to show all the boys that the girls could compete with them. We worked so well as a team and enjoyed every minute of the final, especially as our boys from the other Birmingham team were caddying for us! We haven’t been able to wipe the smiles off our faces all the way back to England!”

The University golf club is proud to be sponsored by Kalamazoo-Reynolds.

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