Catriona Matthew’s Major Win Ended With a Late-Night Bottle (Not That Kind)

At 3 a.m., Catriona Matthew was sitting at the kitchen table with the Women’s Open trophy beside her and her newborn daughter in her arms.

A few hours earlier, Matthew had won the 2009 Ricoh Women's British Open (now called the AIG Women’s Open) at Royal Lytham & St Annes, becoming the first Scottish woman to win a major championship. By the next morning, the performance was already becoming an international “super mom” headline—she had won the championship just 11 weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Sophie.

Image: David Cannon/Getty Images

What Matthew remembers most, though, is that quiet part afterward.

“My mum had been up doing the 3 a.m. feeds all week while we were playing,” Matthew told Skratch. “So I said to her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it tonight.’”

But her mother had been so used to waking up that she got up anyway.

There was still plenty happening after the final putt dropped. Shortly after the tournament, European captain Alison Nicholas announced her 2009 Solheim Cup team, with Matthew earning a spot for the fifth consecutive time. Between the major win, family in town and Solheim Cup celebrations, the night stretched well beyond sunset.

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Image: Catriona Matthew with her husband Graham and daughters, two year old Katie and 11 week old Sophie. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Matthew’s husband, Graeme—who caddied for her throughout her professional career—had been on the bag again that week at Royal Lytham, while her family helped care for the couple’s two young daughters nearby.

“So 3 in the morning, there we are sitting at the kitchen table with the trophy on the table, having a cup of tea, and I'm feeding Sophie,” Matthew said. “It was just one of those really surreal moments.”

At the time, none of it felt especially extraordinary.

“I wouldn’t really have thought it was anything overly special,” she said. “You’re just getting back. I was trying to make the Solheim Cup team.”

That’s often how elite women athletes talk about things everyone else labels impossible. There’s rarely time to romanticize it in the moment. There are flights to catch, toddlers to get to sleep, practice rounds to play and, sometimes, 35 holes on a Sunday before racing to the airport with two kids in tow.

Image: Team Europe captain Catriona Matthew leaves the stage with her two daughters after the Opening Ceremony 2019 The Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in Auchterarder, Scotland. (Photo by Andrew Redington/WME IMG/WME IMG via Getty Images)

Matthew, now 56 and still one of the most respected figures in European golf, knows that perspective better than most. A four-time LPGA winner, she turned pro in 1995, qualified for tour on her first attempt, played in nine Solheim Cup teams, and later captained Team Europe to victory at Gleneagles in 2019. She represented Great Britain at the 2016 Rio Olympics and spent decades building one of the most quietly impressive careers in women’s golf.

Matthew laughs now looking back on those years traveling tour life with two young children because, in hindsight, it sounds almost impossible.

“There were times we were up at 5 in the morning walking them around trying to get them to sleep,” she said. “I remember sitting eating dinner in the bathroom while they were trying to sleep in the bedroom.”

Tournament golf didn’t stop for any of it. There were still early tee times, cross-country flights and, in one U.S. Women’s Open, a 35-hole Sunday after one of her daughters got sick overnight and couldn’t go to daycare. A daycare worker picked her up at 4 a.m., Matthew finished the round, collected both children and raced to the airport afterward.

And somehow, Matthew thinks becoming a mother may have helped her golf.

“I wish we’d started earlier,” she joked. “We should have had more children.”

The perspective motherhood brought changed the way she handled pressure.

“It takes a little bit of the pressure off you because it’s not all about you anymore,” she said. “As a professional golfer, it’s quite selfish. It’s all about you. Once you actually have a family, there’s someone more important than you.”

In many ways, the women’s game has spent the years since Matthew’s win slowly building more support around players trying to balance both worlds.

When the AIG Women’s Open returns to Royal Lytham this summer, the championship will look very different from the one Matthew won in 2009.

Image: Catriona Matthew at Royal Lytham & St. Annes on April 28, 2026 in Lytham St Annes, England. (Photo by Jan Kruger/R&A/R&A via Getty Images)

The purse is now $10 million. Player services, physio support, recovery spaces and daycare are standard parts of tournament weeks. Broadcast coverage has expanded and the infrastructure around the event has grown alongside the level of golf being played.

Back then?

“I think perhaps there was a physio,” Matthew said. “And that was it.”

More than the purse increase itself, Matthew notices how differently the championship now feels.

“You feel like you’re coming to a major event,” she told Skratch at the media day for the 2026 AIG Women's Open.

That growth matters for mothers on tour, but it matters for everyone else too. Better support systems, better venues and better investment raise the level of the entire product.

And there’s still room for the women’s game to grow.

The LPGA opened major season a few weeks ago at the Chevron Championship, where conversations around visibility, presentation and coverage again highlighted the gap that still exists between women’s majors and the men’s version of the same events. Bigger purses help. Better infrastructure helps too.

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But progress in women’s golf has rarely happened all at once.

In 2009, Catriona Matthew won a major with a newborn at home and almost no infrastructure around her. Today, there are more mothers on tour, more support systems in place and more acknowledgement that elite athletes should not have to choose between motherhood and their careers.

The performance quickly became framed as a “super mom” story—and understandably so. Winning a major 11 weeks after giving birth still sounds almost impossible, even in modern sports. But talking to Matthew now, what stands out most is how little time she spent thinking about whether it could be done.

There was another round to prepare for. A Solheim Cup team to make. A baby waking up in the middle of the night. Life just kept moving. Somehow, that’s what makes it all feel even more remarkable now.

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