Kylie Walker only Scot in field

for Portuguese championship

Kylie Walker (Buchanan Castle), the only Scot in the field of 73 players, has the second lowest handicap in the 79th Portuguese international women's amateur golf championship which tees off over the Quinta do Peru course, near Lisbon tomorrow.

Kylie, pictured right by Cal Carson Golf Agency, winner of the St Rule Trophy in 2008 when she also won the SLGA Order of Merit and lost to fellow-Scot Roseanne Niven in a play-off for the British women's amateur stroke-play title, has remained an amateur after failing to gain pass marks at the recent Ladies European Tour Qualifying School at La Manga, Spain.
The 22-year-old Dunbartonshire & Argyll champion, coached by Bob Collinson, has a handicap of +3.2, bettered only by France's Marion Ricordeau with +4 in the Portuguese field
England too has only one representative - Rachel Drummond, but Wales has five: Amy Boulden, Hannah Jenkins, Katherine O'Connor, Rhian Wyn Thomas and Tara Davies, while Ireland has four: Anna McCormack, Niamh Kitching, Victoria Bradshaw and Sarah Crowe.
The championship, the first on the 2009 European women's amateur circuit, is over four rounds of stroke-play and ends on Sunday.
Last year's winner by eight shots, Spanish ace Carlota Ciganda, is now a student at Arizona State University. Scottish amateur champion Michele Thomson (McDonald Ellon), who turned pro after gaining an LET players' card, finished third while Kylie Walker came joint seventh 12 months ago in Portugal.