The row that raged over Garvey’s stand

RORY McILROY’S recent comment that he “looked forward to playing for Team GB” in the 2016 Olympic Games revived a controversy that blew up more than 50 years ago when a great Irish lady golfer withdrew from the Great Britain & Ireland Curtis Cup team because the blazer badge displayed only the Union Jack flag.

Not surprisingly, the issue is central to an interesting book I received over the festive period titled “Philomena Garvey: Queen of the Irish Fairways” written by Paul Garvey, the proprietor and manager of the Irish Golf Archives website, and unrelated to the famous golfer. Sadly, Ms Garvey passed away on May 5 last but she remains the greatest female golfer ever produced by this country, a claim substantiated by her wide array of achievements over a 30-year period from the end of World War Two until well into the 1970s.

Henry Cotton, the prince of English golfers for several decades, described her as “the finest woman golfer I’ve ever seen” and aspects of her game were compared to Ben Hogan and Walter Hagen. Philomena captured the Irish Close Championship on 15 occasions, the British Amateur Championship and made six appearances on the Curtis Cup team.