Andy DevaneyEngland’s Euros and Home Internationals Senior Women’s team selections have been made for September, with captain Janet Melville choosing a core of proven winners for a two-stop assignment that begins in Bulgaria and ends at Royal St David’s in Wales.
European success is there to be repeated; the Home Internationals crown is there to be reclaimed. September, in other words, has acquired rather more edge than the average committee diary.
A September double with unfinished business
The European Senior Women’s Team Championship takes place at BlackSeaRama Golf Resort & Villas from 1–5 September. Julia Brook, Emma Brown, Sally Shayler, Kerry Smith, Anne Wheble and Tracey Williamson make up England’s six-player side.
That selection carries useful recent evidence. Brook, Shayler, Smith and Williamson were all part of England’s winning European team in 2025, so Melville is not asking an entirely fresh group to discover how the week works while simultaneously trying to win it.
Two weeks later, attention shifts to the Senior Women’s & Men’s Home Internationals at Royal St David’s from 15–17 September.
England arrive with a rather more irritating memory. Ireland produced an impressive final-day comeback to take the title in 2025. Team golf has a habit of keeping old scorecards around long after everybody would prefer them quietly shredded.
Brown and Smith arrive with serious form
Emma Brown’s record gives the European side considerable competitive heft.
She finished second at the 2026 R&A Senior Women’s Amateur after taking third in 2025 and won the 2025 England Senior Women’s Order of Merit.
Her wider amateur CV includes victories in the British Ladies Amateur, European Ladies Amateur, English Women’s Stroke Play and Scottish Women’s Stroke Play, plus three Curtis Cup appearances for Great Britain & Ireland between 2000 and 2004.
Kerry Smith has been similarly difficult to remove from leaderboards.
She was third at the 2026 R&A Senior Women’s Amateur, second in the 2026 English Senior Women’s Stroke Play and runner-up in the 2026 English Senior Women’s Amateur.
Add national titles in the 2024 English Senior Women’s Stroke Play and 2023 English Senior Women’s Amateur and there is little mystery about her inclusion.
Shayler, Brook and Williamson bring continuity
Sally Shayler finished first in the stroke-play stages of the English Senior Women’s Amateur in both 2025 and 2026, while also collecting back-to-back Welsh Women’s Open Senior titles in 2024 and 2025.
In 2026 she tied for first before losing a four-way play-off. She also tied for first at the Italian Senior Women’s Open Championship before another play-off defeat. Golf can be unnecessarily specific in its cruelties.
Brook, meanwhile, was fourth in the 2026 English Senior Women’s Stroke Play and has posted top-10 finishes in the R&A Senior Women’s Amateur in both 2025 and 2026.
Williamson adds a 2026 Norfolk Ladies County Championship and a top-five finish in this year’s English Senior Women’s Stroke Play to a record that already includes the 2021 English Senior Women’s Stroke Play title.
Anne Wheble completes the European six after winning the 2025 English Senior Women’s County Champion of Champions and reaching the semi-finals of the 2026 English Senior Women’s Amateur.
Ratcliffe and Beardsall come in for Royal St David’s
The Home Internationals group retains Brook, Shayler, Smith, Wheble and Williamson, with Sophie Beardsall and Elaine Ratcliffe joining them.
Ratcliffe’s selection is particularly hard to argue with. The 2026 English Senior Women’s Amateur champion also finished inside the top 10 at this year’s R&A Senior Women’s Amateur.
Her history runs rather deeper. Ratcliffe won the English Women’s Amateur in 1998, played in two Curtis Cups and later captained Great Britain & Ireland in 2021 and 2022.
Beardsall brings a third-place finish at the 2026 Scottish Senior Women’s Open, a top-five at the 2025 English Senior Women’s Stroke Play and experience from England’s 2025 Home Internationals side. She also won gold at the 2025 Island Games in Orkney.
Melville has options and expectations
The common thread is not simply experience but current relevance.
Across 2025 and 2026, several of these players have been winning championships, reaching the sharp end of national events or threatening significant international titles. Four members of the European squad also carry the memory of England’s winning European campaign in 2025.
Melville, an England Golf Hall of Famer, therefore inherits a pleasant sort of problem: expectation.
England go to Bulgaria attempting to repeat their European success before heading to Wales trying to reverse the Home Internationals result that Ireland snatched from them on the final day a year ago.
There are easier ways to spend September. Very few are as interesting.
