ATHENS, Ga. — The 25th-ranked Lady Tigers should have a good feel of what the scores will be when it finally tees off here Friday in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championships at the University of Georgia Golf Course.
The teams play the first round in order of finish from a year ago, so runnerup LSU will go out with defending league and national champion Georgia and third place Auburn, now this year’s No. 1 team in the country. The three teams will play in the final wave of four beginning at 10:30 a.m. By then at least two waves should have completed nine holes giving the favorites an idea of course conditions.
For LSU women’s golf coach Karen Bahnsen, she didn’t like finishing second in her own LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic two weeks ago at the University Club.
But what she did like the consistency in scores her teamed showed over the 54 holes. That’s what she is hoping for at this venue as well.
This 6,014-yard, par 72 design of Robert Trent Jones is very familiar to most of the SEC teams which play it every spring in the Liz Murphey Invitational. Like its counter part in Augusta, it also features its own “Amen Corner” where fans can watch players attempt to cross the long par 5 12th to a peninsula green only then to face the par-3 13th with an all-carry over water tee shot.
LSU finished 14th in this year’s Liz Murphey when the team threw a bad second round, something that has bothered the Lady Tigers most of the year.
But in the LSU/Cleveland event, the Tigers put together rounds of 297-293 to open up, the seventh best 36-hole team score in school history.
LSU’s 54-hole total of 895 was the best of the season and for a coach who likes to see her team begin to peak at SEC/NCAA time, this was a very good sign.
“I was very pleased with what we did in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic,” said Bahnsen. “Sure we wanted to win and we tried very hard to do that. But we played with a consistency that we need to carry over into the SECs this weekend and use that to prepare ourselves for the NCAA Regionals. With us playing well at home and with the Regionals at our home course, it certainly gives us added confidence going into this portion of the schedule.”
LSU will go with its lineup of the two senior out front, Shreveport’s Meredith Duncan and Gretna’s Lindy Hitdlebaugh, followed by Dallas freshman Brooke Shelton, with sophomores Isabel Dornellas (Rio de Janeiro) and Devon Day (Greer, S.C.) taking the four-five spots.
Duncan, ranked 11th in the country in the college Sagarin performance ranks this year, is second in the SEC in stroke average at 73.61. The defending U.S. Women’s Amateur champion has won three college tournaments in her last five college starts, most recently the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic with a 1-under score of 215, that following on her win at Florida earlier in the spring when she posted a 214.
The weather is expected to be good, but no one expects the low scores of a year ago when Katy Harris blistered the Florida course for a seven-under 65 and Kristy McPherson won the individual title with a 9-under 207.
“This is always an exciting time of the year and this year is no different,” said Bahnsen, taking part in her 18th SEC Championship as a coach at LSU. “We have the type of team that if it continues to play like it did the last tournament, can be a factor again in the SECs.”
LSU has been a constant factor in the Championships each of the last seven years with five seconds, a third and a fourth in that time. Two years ago, at Rogers, Ark., the Lady Tigers came from ninth after the first round and 11 shots back after two rounds, to finish second to Auburn by two shots.
Last year, Georgia won by five shots over LSU.
LSU’s lone conference crown came in 1992 when the tournament was conducted at the San ta Maria golf course in Baton Rouge.