Date: September 25, 2012
Author: Bruce Young / iseekgolf.com

Espirito Santo kicks off World Amateur

The Espirito Santo Trophy is played this week as part of the two week festival of World Amateur Golf Championship in Antalya in Turkey. This week s Women’s event will be played over the Old and the New courses at the Gloria Golf Club. The men’s World Amateur Team Championship, the Eisenhower Trophy, will be played at the Antalya and Cornelia Golf Clubs beginning on October 4th. 53 countries are represented in the 72 hole stroke-play contest which begins on Thursday September 27th with the best two scores each day counting towards the overall total. An individual contest is also played. Australia is represented at the Espirito Santo by the US Girls Junior Championship Minjee Lee, Breanna Elliot and Whitney Hillier. Lee (Royal Fremantle) became the first Australian to win the US Girls Junior Championship in July. She is a former Singapore Ladies Amateur, Western Australian Amateur and Handa Junior Masters champion and was runner-up in the Australian Amateur Championship in 2011. Elliott (Yarrawonga and Border) won the Trans-National Amateur in South Carolina in July and won the South Australian, Western Australian and New South Wales Stroke Play titles earlier in the year. Hillier (Joondalup) won the Malaysian Amateur Championship, Lake Macquarie Amateur and the Riversdale Cup earlier in the year and was the medallist at the Trans-National Amateur in the United States in July. All three will be making their debut in the event and striving to become the first Australian team to win since Katherine Hull, Lindsey Wright and Vicky Uwland took out the title in Malaysia in 2002. The Korean team are the defending champions having won the event by a massive 17 shots in Buenos Airies in 2010.