Short History of DICL

The idea formed in my mind to have a league, as up until 1984 we only played “friendly matches” and a little bit of”needle” would be nice. I mentioned it to Ros Weston on the 2nd tee at Droitwich and she agreed it would be good. I then took it to the Droitwich ladies committee and they were all in complete agreement. 

The Lady Captain at that time was Muriel Somerville, who sadly is no longer with us, but she agreed to start the ball rolling. 

I think Ros weston was our County Rep that year and she took the idea to the County in the hope they would support us, but they did not want to have anything to do with it because we would be running a handicap competition. So we decided to ‘go it alone’. Marion Lancaster, our Ladies Secretary then wrote to all the clubs in the County to see if the idea was feasible. We got a reasonable response but a lot of the Ladies Sections in those days had difficulty getting course time. In the end we had ten teams involved, which would be two divisions of five clubs in each division. 

As far as I can remember the founding clubs were: 

Droitwich, Halesowen, North Worcester, Holywood (Gay Hill), Evesham, Churchill & Blakedown, Habberley, Redditch, Fulford Heath and I think, Little Lakes (it may have been Hagley)  

We then had several meetings with representatives from these clubs to formulate the rules which apart from a few weeks have stood the test of time. 

The Droitwich Committee decided to donate the Shield. 

The League was originally started to give ladies who were not quite good enough to play for the County but were still playing a good standard of golf. I think the top handicap at the start was 22 but got changed to 24 as some clubs were finding it difficult to produce a team. 

It made me very proud to look round the room and see how much the Droitwich League has grown since 1984. 

To end i would say that as Droitwich was instrumental in starting the League, we wanted “Droitwich” to be included in the title so the Ladies Committee of the day decided to donate the Droitwich Shield, which over the years has had to be enlarged! 

I would hope that in the future, Clubs will recognise our wishes and keep the League as the DROITWICH INTER CLUB LEAGUE. My good wishes to all Clubs involved, with plenty of good golf and camaraderie. 

Sylvia Gray