Chloe Goadby had the supportive words of British golf legend Catriona Matthew ‘in her head’ as she won the biggest title of her career, beating her ‘best friend’ in the Scottish Women’s Amateur Championship final at Gullane yesterday.
The 2009 British Open champion is part of the new Scottish Golf Performance programme and messaged Chloe ahead of her semi-final win over recent St Rule winner Hannah Darling (Broomieknowe). She then went on to beat Tara Mactaggart (Minto) to claim a title she narrowly missed out on two years ago. In 2019 she lost in the final to Kimberley Beveridge.
“She (Catriona) has been a great mentor to us so far and I came down for a couple of games with her the other week and she helped me with a few lines and a bit of advice,” said the 23-year-old last night. “That was massively helpful.
“She also dropped me a message earlier today just to tell me to stick to my processes and to stay patient which I was reminding myself of out there. It’s easy to get a bit down when you miss a couple of putts but I kept Catriona’s words in my head and that helped a lot. She’s been massively helpful to me.”
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In the final Chloe was never behind and took control around the turn by winning by winning the ninth, 10th and 11th before taking the 15th to close out matters 4&3. In the morning she took on in-form Hannah Darling, who had stormed into the last four with two impressive victories.
And the St Regulus player, who was named in the provisional GB&I Curtis Cup squad at the end of last year, claimed a brilliant 5&4 success over the highly-talented teenager.
“It’s fair to say I have exceeded my expectations this week,” said Chloe. “It feels amazing and to do it here at Gullane makes it even better. I’ve always loved the place. It reminds me of home at St Andrews and the last person to win this here was Catriona (Matthew) so that makes it even more special.
“Tara and I are great friends. It’s a tough one. It’s not easy to come up against someone you’re close to, but you’ve just got to put that to one side and pretend it’s not them you are playing. You’ve just got to stick to your own game and I think I did that well today.”
Louise Duncan from West Kilbride topped the qualifying thanks to a nine-under-par second round, which included four eagles. Remarkably she was three over on the par threes but bagged threes at the par five third, fifth and 15th and rounded things off with a two at the last (316-yard par four).