Five things you need to know about Catriona Matthew
1/ Only Dame Laura Davies and Annika Sorenstam have racked up more Solheim Cup points than the 22 posted by Catriona Matthew.
She’s played on nine teams – the first in 1998 at Muirfield Village, in Ohio, and the last at Des Moines last month – and has been a winner on three occasions. Those successes came at Barseback (2003), Killeen Castle (2011) and Colorado Golf Club (2013), where she holed the winning putt.
Matthew is also joint third, with Cristie Kerr, on the all-time match victories list. Her 18 triumphs can only be bettered by…Davies and Sorenstam with 22 each.
2/ Matthew is the 10th European Solheim Cup captain following Mickey Walker, Pia Nilsson, Dale Reid, Catrin Nilsmark, Helen Alfredsson, Alison Nicholas, Liselotte Neumann, Carin Koch and Annika Sorenstam.
3/ Matthew won her first major championship – the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2009 at Royal Lytham – just 11 weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Sophie Lauren, and three weeks before her 40th birthday. It was the first win by a Scottish woman in a major.
She said she was back practising only five weeks later. She was given an MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours list.
The victory also arrived only a week after she and her husband Graeme, then her long-time caddie, escaped a hotel fire while competing at the Evian Championship. He burned his feet in the escape and couldn’t carry the bag for the opening two rounds.
4/ Catriona Matthew lives in North Berwick, and her family home overlooks the 18th of the famous links.
Her grandparents had the house originally, and her mother and father bought it and moved in while she was at university in Stirling. She joined the golf club when she was 12.
5/ While there was a huge furore over the admission of women members to Muirfield, Matthew has said she’d love to join the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers – should the opportunity arrive.
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