R&A PRESS RELEASE

STRONGEST OF FIELDS FOR AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
AT ROYAL LYTHAM & ST ANNES LATER THIS MONTH

Royal Lytham & St. Annes, one of the great championship courses in the north-west of England, has attracted one of the strongest and most representative fields for many years for The Amateur Championship that will be played there and at St. Annes Old Links from 18 to 23 June.
Players from 29 countries will be competing for the honour of having their name inscribed on a trophy that was first played for in 1886, 12 months after the inaugural event at Royal Liverpool, Hoylake, the founding club of what was to become the Amateur Championship in 1922.
While Lytham has had 10 Open championships played over its historic links, this year marks only the fourth Amateur championship to be played there since the first in 1935 when American Walker Cup player Lawson Little successfully defended the title he had claimed twelve months earlier at Prestwick.
Little, Horace Hutchinson, Harold Hilton, Michael Bonallack and Peter McEvoy still remain the only players to have successfully defended the Amateur championship.
St Annes Old Links, many times a Final Qualifying venue for The Open, will be used in parallel with Royal Lytham & St. Annes on the two days of stroke play qualifying.
Players from Great Britain and Ireland will surely have Walker Cup selection as a target for 2007 and a good performance in the Amateur will reinforce their claim for a place in the ten-man team.
English player Jamie Moul, currently No 2 in the R&A World Amateur Golf Ranking after holding the No 1 spot for 16 weeks, must already have his sights set on Royal County Down in September. Moul reached the semi-final stage of the Amateur last year at Royal St George’s, only to lose to fellow English international Adam Gee.
Also staking their claim for a place are, American college student, Rhys Davies of Wales and Craigielaw player Lloyd Saltman. Both were in the 2005 Walker Cup team and this year, while Davies was winning twice on the college circuit, Saltman made an explosive start to the season with four major stroke-play victories, in England, Ireland and Scotland.
Welsh stalwart Nigel Edwards, already twice a Walker Cup player, is in the field for Lytham and England’s most capped player, Gary Wolstenholme, will hope to become a member of the exclusive club of players who have won the Amateur on three occasions, his previous successes coming in 1991 and more recently in 2003 at Royal Troon.
If the trophy is to go overseas then it is likely that its destination will be one of the main golfing nations who have several players in the field.
It is over 30 years since the last American victory. With 12 players in this year’s field, the time might be right to redress that. Their top contender could be Luke List, a college player who earlier in the year won the Jones Cup at Sea Island against a top international entry.
A large entry has been received from South Africa includes national champion Louis de Jager while one of the top Australians playing in the Amateur is Rohan Blizard, their national amateur champion.
Competitors play 18 holes on each of Royal Lytham & St. Annes and St. Annes Old Links on Monday and Tuesday, June 18 and 19. The top 64 and ties enter the match-play stages leading to the 36 hole final on Saturday, June 23.

The draw can be viewed at www.randa.org – championships.