NASHVILLE — The LSU women’s golf team opens its 2002 Fall season here Monday, playing the first two rounds of the Vanderbilt-hosted Mason Rudolph Women’s Championship.
The two-day, 54-hole event is being played over the 6,276-yard, par 72 Iron Horse Course of the Legends Club. The teams will play 36 holes Monday with the final 18 holes set for Tuesday.
A total of 14 teams will take part in the event with Arizona, Ole Miss, Tulane, Missouri, Ohio State, Oregon State, North Carolina State, Stanford, Tennessee, Furman, Northwestern and UNC-Wilmington joining LSU and Vanderbilt.
LSU will have three returnees and two first-year players in its opening day lineup, which will be minus All-American Meredith Duncan for the first time having completed her four-year collegiate career. Junior Isabel Dornellas will play the No. 1 spot for the opening day, with All-SEC honorable mention sophomore Brooke Shelton in the No. 2. spot. Junior Devon Day will have the third spot with freshmen Rachel Overstreet and Analia Lemus round out the starting squad.
LSU will have four tournaments in both the fall and spring portions of the season, including the annual LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge.
“We are looking forward to the challenges of the coming season,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, the dean of Southeastern Conference women’s golf coaches, who enters her 19th season as the head coach. “This is a young team that will probably have some ups and downs along the way, but the important thing is to build slowly as we have always tried to do in an attempt to build toward a peak at the end of the season.”