Yorkshire golf: Morris leads White Rose combatants into battle for British ladies’ title at Moortown GC

And this week she will go into the British ladies’ open amateur stroke play championship at Moortown as England’s second-ranked player in the Ascotgolf.com order of merit.

The Woodsome Hall player deflected congratulations for rising to such an exalted position, just behind Dorset’s Sophie Keech, who beat her narrowly in the quarter-finals of the English women’s open match play championship on her way to the title.

“Bronte Law [ English women’s amateur champion] has just had a good performance in the US Amateur, which carries a lot of points, so I’ll probably be down to third when the rankings are updated,” said the former Yorkshire amateur champion.

Even so, she has more than made up for an injury-hit 2014 season, which saw her just outside England’s top 50, climbing to a position where it seems her target of earning senior international recognition is almost certain to be met.

But first things first; Morris leads a 19-strong Yorkshire contingent into a competition starting on Wednesday in which the opposition steps up a level from the England Golf events in which she has excelled this summer.

“There will be a lot of Europeans and I think a couple of Americans and a couple of players from Australia, so it’s a much higher standard,” she said ahead of this week’s practice days, which she is using to re-familiarise herself with a course she had not played for 18 months.

Morris and her father Roger will, like her competitors, use the pre-tournament rounds as a way of sizing up the course, both literally and metaphorically.

“I do have a set of notes, but we will be playing off a different set of tees so I will just look back to the tee from the fairway and see where the best lines are for my tee shots,” said Morris.

“We will work out what our yardages are to all the bunkers and the middle of the greens and see what has changed.

“The [practice round] rules allow us to hit two balls per hole, no more, and they do have refs out there because some of the girls seem to spend forever so the officials do try to quicken us up if we are really slow.”

Playing a top tournament so close to her Huddersfield home will give Morris the chance to enjoy the comfort of her own bed each night unless she gets an early tee-off time, in which case she will stay in a hotel in Leeds.

Familiar surroundings and, with 18 other Yorkshire entrants, familiar faces although she says there tends not to be too much inter-action between the White Rose rivals, mainly because of logistics.

“Sometimes in practice I will play with my friends from the Yorkshire county scene – I’ve played a couple of times this year with (Rotherham GC’s) Olivia Winning and Holly Morgan [Hallamshire GC],” she said, “but apart from that I rarely see people because we all have different tee-off times.

“A few of them waited behind at St Annes [where Morris was beaten only by a birdie putt on the last hole from Cornwall’s Sammie Giles] to see if I would win, but apart from that we don’t often see one another.

“If I see them we will have a chat, but everybody is teeing off or practising so it’s not really feasible to have a long chat and stuff.”

People Morris is likely to see are England selectors, who will monitor her ahead of selecting a side for the Home Internationals, which Royal Wimbledon will stage from September 9-11.

Their minds are likely to have already been made up in her favour, given her outstanding year. But Morris will be focused purely on following the old golfing adage: one shot at a time.

“I’m just going to go into it and see what happens,” she said. “!’m not really thinking about anything else, just playing my own game and playing the course and what will be will be.”

There will be seven trophies at stake this week, with the winner receiving the Nicholls Trophy and the runner-up the Holden Trophy.

The Taunton Trophy will go to the player with the lowest 18-hole score over the four rounds and the highest finishing player under 23 at the end of 72 holes will win the Duncan Salver.

The Angela Uzielli Trophy is awarded to the highest finishing player over 23 years of age and the Dinwiddy Trophy will be won by the highest finishing under-18 player.

Finally, there is the team award trophy staged in conjunction with the first two rounds of the championship. On home soil, Wales won that piece of silverware last year.

There will be a cut to the leading 40 players and ties after 36 holes.