Team Europe to honour memory of slain golfer

The European Ryder Cup team will wear yellow ribbons during this week’s match-play golf tournament in memory of Celia Barquin Arozamena, a former Iowa State golfer from Spain who was stabbed to death Sept. 17 on a golf course in Ames, Iowa.

“Obviously, the golfing family extends way beyond what we are trying to do this week,” European captain Thomas Bjorn said Tuesday. “Those events in America, with Celia being killed while playing golf, is something that has hit everybody in the golf family, and, obviously, our two Spanish players very much. We felt that, after a conversation between Ryder Cup Europe with Celia’s mother, we would honour her this week. That’s what we are doing, and it’s nothing about us, but it’s just more about the fact that the golfing family gets touched by these things all over the world. It’s terrible when things like this happen.

“Such a great prospect for the game of golf, she was, but also a wonderful person. And when you speak to Sergio (Garcia) and Jon (Rahm) about it, they both couldn’t talk highly enough about her. We felt like that was appropriate for the week.”

Barquin Arozamena, 22, exhausted her college eligibility last season, when she became just the second Cyclones golfer to earn medallist honours at a conference tournament and advanced to the NCAA regional for a fourth straight year. She had returned to Iowa State to finish her civil engineering degree. The native of Puente San Miguel, Spain, also won the European Ladies’ Amateur championship in July, shooting a course-record.