Bishop’s Stortford Golf Club’s Rebecca Earl scores three top-six finishes in Rose Ladies Series
Rebecca Earl, the Bishop’s Stortford Golf Club member who is in her second year as a professional, showed the progress she has made with three top six finishes in the Rose Ladies Series in England.
The 25-year-old’s performances followed a solid start in her first event in this year’s LET Access Series, the official development series for the Ladies European Tour (LET).
The Rose Ladies Series, now in its sixth season, is sponsored by last month’s Masters runner-up Justin Rose and his wife Kate.
It was created in 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to give female professional golfers the chance to keep playing. It is now condensed into five one-day early-season events, which act as a warm-up for players on the Ladies European Tour and the LET Access Series.
Each event winner receives £10,000, the biggest prize for a one-day golf competition in Britain among men or women.
Earl, who in 2019 was crowned English Women’s Open Amateur strokeplay champion, played in three of the five Rose Ladies Series events, where on each occasion she was joined in the field of competitors by Dame Laura Davies, winner of the LET Order of Merit a record seven times and a big supporter of this competition since its creation.
Earl’s best performance came in her first event, at Southport & Ainsdale Golf Club, on Wednesday April 30, when she tied for third. This was followed by a sixth-place finish at Formby Ladies Golf Club on Friday May 2 and then a fourth in the final event of the series at The Buckinghamshire on Friday May 9.
Her performances will stand her in good stead for the rest of the LET Access Series, where she finished tied for 15th out of a field of 95 in the 54-hole Madaef Golfs Ladies Open by Saidia Resorts in Morocco in late April.
Earl posted a three-round total of 221 (five over par), seven shots behind winner Thalia Martin, of England. She could have been in contention for victory had it not been for a disastrous opening round of 80 (eight over). But she then shot a 70 and a 71 to move up the field – the only player, along with the winner, to card sub-par rounds in the second and third.
She will be in LET Access Series action again on May 21-23 in the Allegria Stegersbach Ladies Open in Austria, the fourth of the 19 tournaments across 12 countries in this year’s series.
Earl, who was Young Sports Personality of the Year at the 2019 Indies Community Awards, lives in Barnston, near Great Dunmow, with parents Jon and Julia. Her younger sister, Holly, lives and works in London.
The former Felsted School student started playing at Braintree Golf Club before switching to Bishop’s Stortford Golf Club at the age of 12 to be part of the Dunmow Road club’s highly regarded youth section.