The Girls Amateur championship dates back to 1919, when it was organized by The Gentlewoman, a weekly illustrated paper for ladies published in London. It’s always been a match play competition but as it has grown in popularity over the years, the event now begins with two 18-hole rounds of stroke play, after which the 64 players with the lowest scores compete in knock-out rounds of match play over 18 holes.

The Challenge Cup, first donated by Princess Mary, and a gold medal are awarded to the winner, while the Level Trophy is presented to the runner-up. In addition to the two main trophies, the following prizes are given to golfers returning the lowest scores over the two qualifying rounds: the Lady Heathcoat–Amory Memorial Medal for over-16 players; the Todd Bowl for under-16 players; and the Fairhaven Pheasant for players under 14 years of age.

The inaugural Girls Amateur was played at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire and it was won by Audrey Croft from Ashford Manor who defeated Christina Clarke from Reddish Vale 1 Up in the final. Both girls met in the last match at the same place the following year and this time Ms. Clarke turned the tables on her opponent, winning at the third extra hole in a sudden-death playoff. A further eighteen editions were held at Stoke Poges before World War II intervened.

The Ladies Golf Union took over running the tournament after the war and the first contest in this new era was held eight miles to the north of the old venue on another Harry-Colt designed course at Beaconsfield, with Pam Davies, a Coventry medical student beating Arlette Jacquet from Belgium 1 Up. The R&A now look after the annual staging of the championship, following the merger with the LGU in 2017.

During the first seventy years of the competition, up until the end of the 1980s, only ten girls from outside the British Isles won the tournament and seven of them – including Lally Vagliano in 1937, who later became president of the World Amateur Golf and established the Vagliano Trophy – were from France. All that changed in the thirty years that followed, with golfers from continental Europe occupying three out of every four spots in the finals.

A number of girls have retained the title they won the previous year – Diana Fishwick (1927/8), Jane Connachan (1980/1) and Mhairi McKay (1992/3) – but only one golfer has ever claimed three successive victories and that was Pauline Doran back in 1930 to 1932.

Spare a thought in more recent times for Brazilian-born Miriam Nagl, who lost three finals in a row, starting in 1997. She turned professional shortly after this 3-time losing streak and represented her home country at the Olympics in 2016, hitting the first tee shot of the women’s competition in Rio.

Notable European winners who have gone on to make their mark in the professional ranks include Suzanne Pettersen from Norway (1999), Azahara Muñoz from Spain (2004) and Anna Nordquist from Sweden (2005). Of the home-based champions, only Georgia Hall (who won at Tenby in 2012) has made an impact on the Ladies European Tour, winning the Women’s British Open in 2018.

Stoge Poges (now called Stoke Park) has hosted the Girls Amateur a record twenty times (1921-1938 and 1952), with West Kilbride staging the event on four occasions between 1954 and 2015. Three other venues have each been used to hold the championship three times: Beaconsfiled, Formby Ladies and Gullane. Only three Royal clubs have hosted the tournament: Royal Norwich in 1972, Royal Belfast in 2010 and Royal St. David’s in 2016.

Henbury Golf Club (1975) is missing from our listings below as it is currently not featured in our Gloucestershire Best in County rankings. Royal Norwich hosted the event in 1972, but that course no longer exists following the club's relocation to Weston Park in 2019. Cotswold Hills hosted the event in 1958, but back then the club played over Cleeve Hill prior to moving to its current home at Ullenwood. The course at Cleeve Hill is therefore included in the list below.