BATON ROUGE — The 21 teams had their one pre-tournament look at the University Club golf course Wednesday in preparation for Thursday’s opening round of the NCAA East Regional Women’s Golf Championships.
The watch word on Wednesday was hot and breezy as the teams had their one look at the course in May condition, although many of the SEC teams were here in April for the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic. The weather is expected to be much of the same on Thursday which may mean an advantage for the 12 top seeds, which will play the early wave which begins at 7:30 a.m. when temperatures hovered in the high 70s for a few hours.
LSU enters the tournament as the 21st team in the country in the Golf World collegiate poll and the 11th seed in the tournament which features 21 teams and three individuals. This is an advance or else tournament as the top eight teams and two individuals not on those eight teams will go from here to the NCAA Division I Women’s National Championships in Seattle, Wash., May 21-24. Two other qualifiers are being held at the same time in the Central Region (East Lansing, Mich.) and the West Region (Stanford, Calif.).
“This is going to be a tough event for us and we really need to be ready to get it done this week,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “But our girls feel really good about being home, playing a course that we know very well and a course that we have consistently done well in the previous three times we have played a tournament on it (the 2000, 2001, 2002 LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic).”
The tournament features the top two teams in the country and each claims one of the number one spots in the poll. Auburn is the number one team in the GolfWeek/Sagarin performance ratings and winner last month of the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic over this same layout. But when Auburn was upset by South Carolina last month in the SEC Championships, the coaches in the Golf World poll, moved ACC champion Duke to No. 1 ahead of Auburn.
The two top seeds will lead off the opening round at 7:40 a.m. playing in a national marquee threesome with defending national champion, Georgia. The Tigers of LSU will be teamed with North Carolina, the 10th seed, and Tulane, the 12th seed, in the second wave of the day, beginning at 8:30 a.m. off the 10th tee.
There will be a morning and afternoon wave each day and those teams in the morning must play in the afternoon on Friday and vice versa before standing in the tournament determines starting spot for Saturday’s final round.
LSU will go with its lineup which finished second in the Cleveland Classic this year, firing the best scores of the season: Shreveport senior Meredith Duncan, the defending United States Women’s Amateur Champion, making her final U-Club appearance, will lead the way along with senior Lindy Hitdlebaugh, freshman Brooke Shelton, and sophomores Isabel Dornellas and Devon Day.
The Tigers are hosting the Regional for the first time since 1993, when LSU hosted the first East Regional at Baton Rouge’s Santa Maria golf course. This is LSU’s eighth straight NCAA regional appearance as the Tigers go for a fifth straight NCAA Championship appearance.
Admission is free and the 54-hole event runs through Saturday.