This year’s Women’s PGA Professional & Assistants Championship moves to Carden Park in a huge year for the Cheshire resort.
Both events run concurrently on June 30 and July 1, with players competing across two rounds of stroke play.
Also, in the first week of September, it will host the Women’s PGA Cup, the first time the event will have moved outside the United States, with Heather MacRae the playing captain for Great Britain & Ireland.
MacRae is a four-time winner of the Women’s PGA Professional Championship and she would come up one shot shy 12 months ago at Goswick, alongside fellow former winners Suzanne Dickens and Holly Morgan.
At the top of the leaderboard Sian Evans and Tracey Boyes would finish on +2 for their 36 holes and it would take four additional replays of the closing hole before Evans would strike the decisive blow.
“My main focus of the day was just to play my golf, my round and not worry about anything else. It's obviously quite challenging at times to just try and minimise the mistakes and just play very steadily. In the first round I made a triple on the 17th and I was adamant that I was going to play that hole well,” explained Evans, who is attached to Rochester & Cobham GC in Kent.
Pictured: Sian Evans of Rochester & Cobham
“When you’re playing, you're just so focused on what you're doing and how your round is going and then you get in and I was told that I would probably be in a play-off. I didn’t really check leaderboards or anything during the round so it was a bit of a surprise. I knew I'd played well and then you have to get into the right emotional state for the extra holes and it's a little bit stressful.”
Evans, who led after 27 holes in the 2023 Championship at Kedleston Park, would record back-to-back 73s while Boyes would shoot rounds of 70-76 and they would then head back down 18.
“It's very easy in a play-off to change your tactic. The 18th at Goswick is a short par 4 with bunkers everywhere so you can either hit iron off the tee and hit a pitch in, or you can go for the green. And I was like, right, I'm just going to carry on playing it the way I had played it, which was iron off the tee, wedge in.
“Tracey did the same thing so we both had wedges in and we both birdied the second extra hole and then I holed a 40-footer across the green to win. I would say that I'm quite a good putter so I'm quite confident in my putting but, in that situation, it's always a bit of an unexpected and welcome surprise.”
There was the added spice of Evans picking up valuable points towards qualification for this year’s Women’s PGA Cup with two spots available via the Championship.
“Obviously the win puts me in a great position and making the team is my biggest aim this year. I've been very fortunate in that I've had a lot of great experiences in golf having played on the Ladies European Tour.
“But obviously, as golfers, we don't play team events that often and representing my country and playing that would be amazing. My partner, Jordan Godwin, actually played in the men's PGA Cup in 2019 in America and he said that it was incredible.”
Royal Troon's Hazel MacGarvie was the runaway winner of the Assistants Championship after back-to-back 69s for a six-under total.
Pictured: Hazel MacGarvie of Royal Troon
The Scot, who recently passed her final year exams, was in stunning form around the Northumberland links and she too will be at Carden Park and hoping for further success.
"It was great to win and I played pretty well. I always try when I'm out on the course to try and enjoy it and just hit fairways and greens. If you hit the middle of the green, you're never too far away, and I managed to hole a few birdie putts. So that's my tactic and obviously it doesn't always work every time but it worked last year, which was good. To do the same again this year would be lovely."
This year's Cheshire Course will be an unknown quantity for MacGarvie but she will be employing the same outlook that worked last year.
"I'm looking forward to going down and I'll have a practice round on Monday. It will be a nice change to play a bit of parkland. I've not been out loads because of my exams. I'm very much the sort of person who has their head in the books and I don't really do much else until that's over. But I've been out and practising more the past few weeks and trying to shake off any rust."
And as for the future?
"To be honest, I've not thought too much about it as I've been so focused on my exams. I absolutely love working at Troon and I enjoy doing all the coaching that I do up here and also being in the shop so I'm definitely not in a rush to go anywhere. I'm just going to enjoy the fact that I've just passed my exams and then we'll take it from there."
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Click here for more information on the Women's PGA Professional & Assistants' Championship at Carden Park
