ROGERS, Ark. — The LSU women’s golf team, ranked eighth in both of the major golf polls, will look to stop the run of Georgia wins when the 2000 Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Tournament gets underway here Friday morning.
The tournament, being hosted by Arkansas for the first time, will be held at the Pinnacle Country Club, located about 20 minutes from Fayetteville. The par-72, 6,102-yard course was founded in 1990 and one its principal home owners is two-time major champion John Daly.
Georgia has won the last three SEC women’s championships, but the gap between teams appears to be a little smaller this year as Georgia is ranked seventh in the latest MasterCard poll, with LSU eighth. In the second ten are Auburn and South Carolina. Mississippi State, with three wins as a team this year, can’t be counted out either.
“It’s really wide open this year,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “It’s really amazing the play of these teams this year. It all depends on who is the hot team on any given week. We’ve really been focusing in hard on this part of our season and coming off our last tournament, the girls are very confident going into the league championships.”
The Lady Tigers are coming off a 31-stroke win in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge two weekends ago. Sophomore Tina Howard, in just her fourth start since tendon surgery wiped out her fall schedule, scored her first collegiate victory and joins Lisette Lee, the senior from Kenner who won at South Carolina, in scoring individual wins this year.
“There is nothing bad you can say about the five players who will play for us this weekend,” Bahnsen said. “Lisette has had an outstanding year, Meredith Duncan has been really strong and look what Tina has done since coming back. Katy Wilkinson and Lindy Hitdlebaugh have had some solid rounds for us and look what Lindy did finishing fifth in our tournament.”
LSU is 36-6 overall against the SEC this year, including a 2-2 split with Georgia. Lee, who leads the team with a 75.33 stroke average, was fifth in last year’s event and will be trying for her third top 10 finish in the event in four years.
All 12 teams will compete over 54 holes, 18 each day with the champion to be crowned Sunday afternoon. From there, LSU will in three weeks advance to an expected sixth consecutive trip to the NCAA East Regional and the Lady Tigers performance there will determine if the team will make a school record third consecutive NCAA Division I Championship appearance later in May.