The European Amateur Team Championship is an annual competition under the jurisdiction of The European Golf Association which comprises a maximum of 24 six-man teams, each of which is nominated by its national golf authority. Male amateur competitors must be citizens of the country they represent with a playing handicap of a certain number (6.0 in 2019) or better.

The tournament begins with two rounds of 18-hole stoke play to decide the seeded draw for the match play portion of the competition. The best five scores each day count towards the team’s aggregate score. Teams are then divided into three flights of eight based on stroke play performance so, for example, the first flight sets up Team 1 v Team 8, Team 2 v Team 7, Team 3 v Team 6 and Team 4 v Team 8.

Match play scoring is decided by teams playing two morning foursomes and five afternoon singles, with a win in either a foursome or single match gaining one point for the team. If a match is level after 18 holes, extra holes are played to arrive at a result. When the overall match outcome has been decided, later ties are regarded as halved, with half a point awarded to each team.

The winning team doesn’t actually get to keep the trophy for a year – it’s retained by their national golf authority which must engrave, insure and return it the following year to the EGA – but team members are presented with a gold medal, while the runners-up and third-placed competitors receive silver and bronze medals, respectively.

The first championship was held at El Prat in Barcelona back in 1959, when the Swedish team emerged victorious. The competition was staged every two years in those days (it became an annual event in 2008) and it was played on a match play round-robin basis for the first four editions.

To date, only two countries have won the tournament on home soil. The first was England back in 2005 (when a team including Gary Wolstenholme and Oliver Fisher defeated Germany 6-1 at Hillside) and the other was Sweden in 2019, with the home team beating England at Ljunghusens Golfklubb 4½ points to 2½ points.

Team England has won the competition 11 times, followed by Scotland with 8 wins then Ireland with 6. Between 1965 and 1995, teams from the British Isles had a stranglehold on the event, winning all sixteen editions – even Wales chipped in with an unexpected success at Royal Mariánské Lázne in the Czech Republic in 1993.

Sweden is a popular place when it comes to staging the European Amateur Team Championship and it’s been held in that country six times: Falsterbo (1963), Halmstad (1985 and 2015), Ljunghusens (2001 and 2019) and Österakers in 2010.

Only one course does not appear below – El Prat from 1959 – as it no longer exists.