{"id":655114,"date":"2026-05-07T08:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T08:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655114\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T08:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T08:23:08","slug":"claire-dowling-named-royal-and-ancient-golf-clubs-first-female-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655114\/","title":{"rendered":"Claire Dowling named Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s first female captain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claire Dowling has been appointed as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s first female captain, 12 years after it opened its membership to women.<\/p>\n

Dowling will serve as the St Andrews institution’s captain in 2026-27, having been nominated by its past captains.<\/p>\n

She will begin her one-year term in office after the traditional driving-in ceremony on the first tee of the Old Course on Friday, 25 September.<\/p>\n

Dowling was one of the first women to join the club, signing-up in 2015 after a vote opened up membership<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She has served on the club’s rules committee and general committee, including as deputy chair for both bodies, and is currently on their membership committee.<\/p>\n

As an amateur player, Dowling represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup on four occasions and was part of the 1986 team which secured a first victory over the United States on American soil with a 13-5 win at Prairie Dunes.<\/p>\n

She went on to captain the GB&I Curtis Cup team Ganton in 2000, where they lost 10-8, and has also led the Vagliano Trophy team and the Irish team.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Dublin, she represented Ireland in the home internationals from 1979 to 1992 and played in six European Team Championships. <\/p>\n

She won five Irish Championships, the first in 1983, the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1986 and the Spanish Amateur Championship in 1987.<\/p>\n

Dowling has also chaired England Golf’s handicap and course rating committee and has acted as a referee at The Open on seven occasions, including at Royal St George’s in 2021 when, with her husband Peter, a retired District Judge, they were the first married couple to referee at the same championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claire Dowling has been appointed as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s first female captain, 12 years after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-655114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}