The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has announced that Claire Dowling will be its captain for the 2026/27 term, after being nominated by the club’s former captains for the important representative role.
Dowling will make history by becoming the first woman to hold the position of captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. She will officially begin her term after the traditional Driving-In ceremony which will take place on the tee of hole 1 of the Old Course at St Andrews on Friday 25 September 2026.
Dowling’s appointment represents a milestone of enormous symbolic value in an institution with centuries of history and is particularly significant within world golf. Furthermore, her appointment is backed by a top-level sporting and administrative career.
As an amateur player, Claire Dowling represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup on four occasions and was part of the 1986 team that achieved GB&I‘s first victory over the United States on American soil, with a convincing 13-5 at Prairie Dunes.
Born and raised in Dublin, Dowling studied at the Dublin College of Catering and graduated from the Trinity College in 1979 with a degree in Hotel and Catering Management.
Much of her life has been linked to competitive golf. She represented Ireland in the Home Internationals between 1979 and 1992 and competed in six European Team Championships during that period. She also played for Great Britain and Ireland in two editions of the Espirito Santo Trophy and on six occasions in the Vagliano Trophy.
Her honours include five Irish Championships, the first of them in 1983, as well as the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1986 and the Campeonato Amateur de España in 1987. She also reached the semi-finals of the current Women’s Amateur Championship in 1981 and 1988.
After her playing career, Dowling remained involved in golf from the sidelines and in management. She was captain of the GB&I team in the Curtis Cup de 2000, where they lost by a narrow 10-8 to the United States at Ganton. She also captained the Vagliano Trophy team and the Irish side.
Off the course, she has carried out extensive work in golf administration. She chaired the Handicap and Course Rating Committee of England Golf following the merger between the EGU and the EWGA in 2012, served on the council of CONGU between 2012 and 2015 and was an advisory member of The R&A‘s Amateur Status Committee between 1997 and 2001.
Claire Dowling was one of the first women to become a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 2015. She subsequently served on the Rules Committee between 2015 and 2019, was appointed vice-president of that committee in 2017, elected to the General Committee in 2019 and named vice-president in 2022. She currently sits on the Membership Committee.
She has also served as an official at The Open on seven occasions, including the 2021 edition at Royal St George’s, where she and her husband Peter, a retired district judge, became the first married couple to officiate at the same championship.
A key figure in Irish women’s golf, Dowling is a lifetime honorary member of the Irish Ladies’ Golf Union and holds the same distinction at several clubs, including Portmarnock, Copt Heath, Woodbrook y Cork. She is also a member of East Devon and currently has a handicap 7.6.
