{"id":571776,"date":"2026-05-07T21:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571776\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T21:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:29:08","slug":"ra-golf-club-names-claire-dowling-as-first-female-captain-in-its-272-year-history-the-royal-and-ancient-golf-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571776\/","title":{"rendered":"R&#038;A golf club names Claire Dowling as first female captain in its 272-year history | The Royal and Ancient Golf Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has appointed amateur player Claire Dowling as the first female captain in its 272-year history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The club, based at the \u201chome of golf\u201d on the east coast of Scotland, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2014\/sep\/18\/royal-and-ancient-golf-club-women-ban\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">opened its membership to women 12 years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Dowling will serve as club captain from September after she was nominated by previous holders of the office. The 2027 Open will be hosted by St Andrews during her tenure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Dublin-born golfer represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup on four occasions and was a member of the 1986 team that secured a first victory over the United States on American soil. She captained the losing Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team at Ganton, in northern England, in 2000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Dowling was one of the first women to join the Royal and Ancient club and has served on several committees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The club has a worldwide membership of around 2,500. It previously had a major role in the administration of the rules of golf but devolved responsibility to a newly formed group of companies, known as the R&amp;A, in 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has appointed amateur player Claire Dowling as the first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-571776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}