There’s no stopping Lily May Humphreys this year and now the English teenager will be making her 2019 PING Junior Solheim Cup debut. Women & Golf got the chance to find out more about the English teen...

As the next edition of Women & Golf is on the shelves NOW, here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect from columnist Lewine Mair this issue.

Lily has heard that the players from the senior Solheim Cup side will sometimes come out and watch the younger fry in a Solheim week, while another thing which has increased her levels of excitement is the prospect of being able to follow her heroines in the match. England’s Georgia Hall is at the top of her list, with Charley Hull and America’s Lexi Thompson not too far behind. Hull and Thompson, incidentally, have both home-schooled as, indeed, has Lily since she finished the primary school where she excelled at netball while also being a dab hand at tennis and cricket. 

It was Lily’s older brother, Jack, who introduced Lily to golf at the Top Golf centre in Chigwell. The coach, Richard Smith, very quickly recognised that he had a rare talent on his hands and was never inclined to alter her natural technique. “He just keeps an eye on me to make sure I don’t take the club back a little flat, which sometimes happens.” 

To this day, she has never had another coach - something which has to work in her favour at a time when so many ambitious players switch unthinkingly from one teacher to another the moment they have any kind of winless spell. 

At the age of 11, when her handicap paused briefly on the 21 mark, Lily whizzed round Channels, her first course, in five over par. As she remembers it, the boys - there were 15 of them and no girls - saw her as an out-and-out bandit. 

“They did a lot of moaning. At the start, they had been miles better than I was but, as I improved, the moaning really started.” 

She recalls a Ryder Cup-type match (a wonderful diversion for the kids you would think) in which it was decided via a draw whether you played for the US or Europe. The boys were always keen to play with her in the foursomes and fourballs, but you will not be surprised to learn that that was never the case when they found themselves drawn against her in the singles. 

It was after Lily had been on the winning side in one of the fourballs that one of the beaten boys departed the scene muttering that his chipping had been so hopeless against hers that he intended to practise until his hands bled. (She never saw any evidence of that happening but still she felt bad.) 

This is just a snippet of Lily May Humphrey’s interview in the latest issue of Women & Golf magazine. You can pick up Women & Golf, on sale NOW, or click here to subscribe now to read the full feature and enjoy W&G delivered to your door!

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