BATON ROUGE — The eighth-ranked LSU women’s golf team opens its 2000 fall season Friday in the annual Auburn Tiger-Derby Intercollegiate.
The event will be conducted on the new Auburn University Club, a par 72 facility which will play to 6,142 yards for this event.
LSU is eighth-ranked in the pre-season GolfWorld poll and 10th in the first MasterCard College Golf Foundation coaches poll. The Lady Tigers have appeared in the last three NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships, finishing fifth, 10th and 10th. LSU finished the year ranked sixth in the MasterCard poll.
The main competition is expected to come from host Auburn in the opener of the five-tournament fall swing. Auburn, the defending SEC champions, are ranked fifth in the opening MasterCard poll.
Others in the field are Alabama, Central Florida, Florida State, Georgia State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, North Carolina-Wilmington, South Florida, Tulane and Vanderbilt.
LSU has had good success in the event in the four previous times it played in this event (1995-98), winning twice with one second and a fifth.
“This is a good way to get our season started,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, who enters her 17th year as the head coach of the women’s golf program. “This is a new venue for us compared to our last time here in 1998, so we must be prepared and focus in so we can this year do a better job of coming out in the first round and posting a good score.”
The five team members for the opening event are all veterans, led by seniors Katy Harris of South Bend, Ind., and Lesley McClurg of Redmond, Wash. Harris played her first three years as Katy Wilkinson before marrying former LSU golfer Chad Harris this past summer, while McClurg returns to action after an injury forced her to miss the entire 1999-2000 campaign. Harris in three years at LSU has a career stroke average of 76.24, third best at LSU.
Shreveport junior Meredith Duncan, who had a breakout spring and summer, will open playing third for LSU after finishing seventh in last year’s NCAAs, earning honorable mention All-America honors. She won the Western Amateur this summer, played in Ireland in the World Student Championships and advanced to the round of 16 in the United States Amateur. In the preseason MasterCard poll, Duncan is ranked the 11th best college golfer in the country. GolfWeek.com at the end of August, ranked her the sixth best amateur golfer in the country after her U.S. Amateur performance.
Rounding out the LSU lineup will be junior Tina Howard of New Zealand, who recently represented her country in the World Golf Championships, and junior Lindy Hitdlebaugh of Gretna. Devon Day, a freshman from Greer, South Carolina, will make her debut as well in the tournament, playing in the individual competition as well.
“This is a veteran team and I look forward to watching them work hard in our first tournament,” said Bahnsen. “We haven’t had a lot of practice time, but their concentration has been good. We’ve stressed getting off to a good start and if we do, then we can try to bring this tournament trophy home again.”
The Tigers are right back in action next week, going to Florida, for the NCAA Fall Preview at the site of the NCAA 2001 Division I Women’s Championships, Sept. 15-17.