Rebekah Gardner was the lone Irish survivor on day one of many 122nd Girls’s Beginner Championship at Nairn.
As Beth Coulter misplaced 5&4 to Norway’s Silje Torvund Ohma, Gardner beat Sweden’s Josefina Tidal by two holes to arrange a final 32 conflict with India’s Mannat Brar.
Scoring
“Yeah, undoubtedly it was tight coming down the stretch,” Gardner stated “However I received off to a pleasant begin and received up just a few holes and received sort of a lead going, after which she got here again, which I anticipated her to do, so I simply sort of needed to dig in and follow my sport plan and keep current, and fortunately received it over the road.
“Positively in match play, something can occur, so it is simply all about staying current and specializing in my sport, and in massive championships like this, something can occur, so it is simply all in the previous few holes.”
After profitable the Ulster Girls’s Stroke Play two weeks in the past, the Clandeboye and College of Miami expertise is feeling assured.
“Yeah, it was good,” she stated. “I had my school season and I performed nicely there, so I have been enjoying strong. So yeah, simply protecting that momentum going and taking it one spherical at a time.
“I am in my second 12 months (in school). I simply completed my second 12 months, and the primary 12 months was troublesome, however I discovered a lot from that and the experiences, and yeah, it is undoubtedly — I am in an important setting with an important group to develop, so yeah.
On a sun-soaked day on the Moray coast, Havanna Torstensson, the reigning R&A Ladies’ Beginner Champion, edged out Curtis Cup star Persistence Rhodes 2&1 in a intently fought tussle to achieve the last-32.
The 17-year-old Swede is presently 613th on the World Beginner Golf Rating® (WAGR®) and had her work minimize out in opposition to an English opponent who sits contained in the top-30 on the worldwide pecking order and was a part of Catriona Matthew’s victorious group over the USA at Sunningdale final 12 months.
However Torstensson confirmed her match play prowess and shook off some early nerves to earn top-of-the-line wins of her profession. In a nip-and-tuck match, Torstensson, who has struggled to seek out her type to date in 2025, took cost on the again 9.
The Junior Solheim Cup participant inched forward on the twelfth with a bogey as each gamers discovered themselves in hassle and he or she doubled her benefit on the following gap. The 14thwas halved in birdies as Torstensson stood agency and staved off Rhodes’ menacing advances.
There have been three Swedish winners of The Girls’s Beginner Championship and the nice omen for Torstensson is that these earlier successes had been achieved on Scottish soil.
Within the opening tie of the day, the primary seed Jasmine Koo delivered an emphatic assertion of intent because the American powered to a 7&5 victory over Judy Joo of South Korea.
Joo had emerged from an exhausting seven-hole play-off to safe her place within the knockout levels, however Koo gained the opening six holes to stamp her authority on affairs. In a show of poise and polish, Koo made two birdies and 11 pars within the 13 holes it took her to beat Joo.
India’s Brar, who has certified for the match play levels for the primary time in three Girls’s Beginner Championship appearances, confirmed her fondness for the format with a formidable 5&4 win over Uma Bergner of Germany. Brar, who reached the semi-finals of final 12 months’s Ladies’ Beginner at Alwoodley, birdied her opening three holes to set herself on the way in which to a cultured victory.
USA Curtis Cup participant Catherine Park, the highest-ranked participant within the area at quantity seven on WAGR®, eased to a 5&3 victory over Germany’s Paula Schulz-Hanssen whereas Australia’s Jasmine Roberts, who tied fourth within the Girls’s Asia-Pacific Beginner championship earlier this 12 months, surged to a 7&6 win over England’s Sophia Fullbrook.
Scotland’s Hannah Darling, a two-time semi-finalist and the highest-ranked Nice Britain and Eire participant competing at Nairn, holed out from a bunker on the sixteenth to beat Sweden’s Alice Johansson 4&2. The last-32 and last-16 ties happen at Nairn tomorrow.
The Championship, based in 1893, boasts a formidable listing of former winners, together with McCormack Medal winner Leona Maguire and main champions Georgia Corridor and Anna Nordqvist.
The winner of this 12 months’s Championship positive factors entry to the AIG Girls’s Open, The Amundi Evian Championship, the US Girls’s Open, the Chevron Championship and, by custom, will earn an invite to compete on the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Beginner.
