The five-time Irish Women\u2019s Close champion and former Curtis Cup player will serve as captain in 2026\/27, having been nominated by past captains of the club.<\/p>\n
She will begin her year in office after the traditional driving-in ceremony on the first tee of the Old Course on Friday, 25 September 2026.<\/p>\n
She represented Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup on four occasions, including the 1986 team, which secured the first victory over the USA on American soil with a 13-5 win at Prairie Dunes.<\/p>\n
Born and educated in Dublin, she attended Dublin College of Catering and graduated from Trinity College in 1979 with a BSc (Mgt) in Hotel and Catering Management.<\/p>\n
She represented Ireland in the Home Internationals from 1979 to 1992, playing in six European team championships during that time.<\/p>\n
She also played in the Espirito Santo Trophy on two occasions and in the Vagliano Trophy six times.<\/p>\n
As Claire Hourihane, she won the first of her Irish Women\u2019s Close titles in 1983 and went on to win the Ladies\u2019 British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1986 and the Spanish Amateur Championship in 1987.<\/p>\n
She reached the semi-final of what is now the Women\u2019s Amateur Championship in 1981 and 1988.<\/p>\n
She went on to captain the Curtis Cup team in a narrow 10-8 defeat to the USA at Ganton in 2000 and also captained the Vagliano Trophy team and the Irish team.<\/p>\n
Off the course, she has been heavily involved in golf administration, chairing England Golf\u2019s Handicap and Course Rating Committee.<\/p>\n
She sat on the CONGU board from 2012 \u2013 2015 and was an advisory member of The R&A Amateur Status Committee from 1997-2001.<\/p>\n
Claire was one of the first women to become a member of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 2015 and served on the rules committee from 2015 to 2019, becoming deputy chair in 2017.<\/p>\n
She was elected to the general committee in 2019 and became deputy chair in 2022. She is currently serving on the membership committee.<\/p>\n
She has acted as a referee at the Open on seven occasions, including at Royal St George\u2019s 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
She is an honorary life member of the Irish Ladies\u2019 Golf Union and holds the same distinction at several golf clubs, including Portmarnock, Copt Heath, Woodbrook (which celebrates its centenary this year) and Cork.<\/p>\n
She is also a member of East Devon, where she lives, and her current handicap index is 7.6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The five-time Irish Women\u2019s Close champion and former Curtis Cup player will serve as captain in 2026\/27, having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7938,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-435664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-brian-keogh","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}