{"id":571971,"date":"2026-05-07T23:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T23:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571971\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T23:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T23:44:12","slug":"ra-makes-history-with-first-female-captain-in-its-272-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571971\/","title":{"rendered":"R&A makes history with first female captain in its 272 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The timing means that the 2027 Open will be hosted by St Andrews<\/a> during her tenure.\n<\/p>\n

\n Ms Dowling 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<\/a> at Ganton, in northern England, in 2000.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more:\n<\/p>\n

\n She won five Irish Championships, the first in 1983, the Ladies\u2019 British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1986, and the Spanish Amateur Championship in 1987. She reached the semi-final of what is now the Women\u2019s Amateur Championship<\/a> in 1981 and 1988.\n<\/p>\n

\n Off the course, Ms Dowling has been heavily involved in golf administration, chairing England Golf\u2019s Handicap and Course Rating Committee following the EGU\/EWGA merger in 2012. She sat on the CONGU board from 2012 to 2015 and was an advisory member of the R&A Amateur Status Committee from 1997-2001.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n She has served 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.\n<\/p>\n

\n A key figure in Irish women\u2019s golf, Ms Dowling is an honorary life member of the Irish Ladies\u2019 Golf Union and holds the same distinction at a number of golf clubs including Portmarnock, Copt Heath, Woodbrook and Cork. She is also a member of East Devon, with a current handicap index of 7.6.\n<\/p>\n

\n Click here to sign up for The Herald’s Business of Golf newsletter, out every Sunday.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n \"Business(Image: Damian Shields)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The timing means that the 2027 Open will be hosted by St Andrews during her tenure. Ms Dowling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-571971","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\/571971","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=571971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}