Western Australians dominate World Amateur Teams list

Golf Australia has announced this year’s teams for the World Amateur Teams Championship in Paris next month.

Unsurprisingly Western Australians dominate the list with two of the three players in both the men’s and women’s teams hailing from the star-studded golfing state.

Kirsten Rudgeley won the English Women’s Amateur in 2021 (Credit: England Golf/Leaderboard)

Australian Amateur champion Connor McKinney (WA), Harrison Crowe (NSW) and Hayden Hopewell (WA) head the Aussie assault for the Eisenhower Trophy (Aug 31 to Sep 3) while amateur star Kirsten Rudgeley (WA), Kelsey Bennett (NSW) and Maddison Hinson-Tolchard (WA) will be looking to take home the Espirito Santo Trophy (Aug 24-27) for the first time since another Western Australian, Minjee Lee, lead the team home in Japan in 2014.

The Australian team of Cameron Davis, Harrison Endycott and Curtis Luck last won the 2016 Eisenhower Trophy in Mexico.

The two teams will be captained respectively by seven-time major winner Karrie Webb and two-time PGA Australian Coach of the Year, Ritchie Smith, who has helped both Minjee Lee and Hannah Green to multiple major wins along with DP World Tour winner, Min Woo Lee.

“It’ll be good fun. Now that I’ve met Karrie we’ll be able to click right away which will be perfect,” said Rudgeley, a two-time winner of the Karrie Webb Scholarship.

“A couple of months ago it came on my radar so you try to keep playing good golf and you get selected. It’ll be an awesome competition…I’m really looking forward to it.”

Cancelled in 2020 due to COVID, the biennial event hasn’t been staged since Ireland in 2018. Both the men’s and women’s events will now be played in back to back years (2022 and 2023) in order to shift the timing from even to odd years and avoid conflict with the Olympic Games.

The 2023 tournament will take place in the Middle East for the first time next October at the Greg Norman-designed Fire Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai.