US play-off victory for Olivia Jordan-Higgins

Channel islander Olivia Jordan-Higgins won an all-English play-off to score a victory on the US women s college circuit.

Olivia, from Royal Jersey, beat off the challenge of Hannah Coles of Maxstoke Park, Warwickshire, after the two players tied at the end of regulation play.

Olivia is a third-year student at Charleston Southern University in South Carolina, who were hosting the CSU Women's Fall Classic. Hannah is a second-year student at Radford University, Virginia.

Both players scored 73, 76 over the par-71 course of 5,898 yards and they were two shots clear of their closest challenger.

Olivia s play also helped her university to win the team prize while Radford were fourth. In third place in this section was Bethune Cookman College, Florida, whose team included three English players: Emma Tayler of Saunton, Devon, and the Dorset pair Fern Grimshaw (Weymouth) and Hannah Bews (Broadstone).

Meanwhile, Buckinghamshire girls champion Steph Gough (Ellesborough)  has made a good start on the college circuit. The 18-year-old freshman at Middle Tennessee State University scored top-ten finishes in her first two outings of the season. Most recently she was joint 14th in a strong field of 90 players for the Johnie Imes Invitational tournament at The Club at Old Hawthorn, Columbia, Missouri.

One of Steph s teammates is her club colleague Clara Leathers, a past Buckinghamshire champion, who is in her third year at university.

A third English player in the tournament was Hannah Lovelock from Hindhead in Surrey. She s a first-year student at the University of Missouri and shot a career low 68 in the first round which included five birdies in the space of nine holes. That put her in second place and she was still there after 36 holes before falling away in the third and final round.

For further information visit www.englishwomensgolf.org