BATON ROUGE — The 12 women’s golf teams of the Southeastern Conference got a final pre-tournament look at the University Club layout Thursday in preparation for the opening round of the 24th annual SEC Women’s Golf Championships on Friday.
They also couldn’t help but see the big trophy that will have someone’s name engraved on it and handed to them at the conclusion of play on Sunday.
The teams had a practice round Thursday over the 6,378-yard, par-72 layout, which has been lengthened some 100 yards from the 2002 NCAA Regional Tournament held at the U-Club. The tournament tees off at 8:30 a.m. off both the first and 10th tees with opening tee times determined by last year’s tournament finish. LSU will tee off in the first wave off the 10th tee with Alabama and Ole Miss.
Auburn won last year’s championship at Lexington, Ky., with a 39-over score of 903 and its two-shot margin over Florida equaled the closest finish in SEC tournament history. No team has won back-to-back since Georgia won three straight in 1997, 1998 and 1999.
LSU last hosted the SEC Championships in 1992 and that was the year LSU claimed its SEC championship played at the Santa Maria Country Club. LSU has finished second in the tournament five times since 1995.
“We are extremely excited about hosting the league championships and we are very pleased that we have apparently been blessed with outstanding weather,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, coaching in her 20th SEC Championship as the dean of SEC women’s coaches. “These are some great teams and we are going to have a chance to do very well here, but we are going to have to be ready to go from the first hole, focusing on each shot and not worrying about what is going on elsewhere on the course.”
The Lady Tigers are ranked 25th in the Golfweek/Sagarin performance poll with a record of 80-25-1 this season. Georgia comes in with a five ranking in the Sagarin with three wins, including a win over Duke in the Bulldogs’ Liz Murphey Collegiate in Athens two weeks ago. Vanderbilt is seventh and Auburn is 10th.
LSU will go with a young lineup featuring a junior, a sophomore and three freshmen, but it is the lineup that came up with the LSU win at the Central District Regional in Florida. Junior Brooke Shelton of Plano, Texas, leads the Tigers in stroke average at 76.17 with four top 10s, including a 3rd place finish in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic in March. Sophomore Vicky Meyer (76.56) of Brazil will play in the second position, with freshman Alexis Rather (77.61) of Tupelo, Miss., and the South African first-year twins Melissa (77.57) and Nicola Eaton (78.550 completing the lineup.
“It is a young lineup, but one that has played the best this season when the pressure was on,” said Bahnsen. “We’ll see how they respond to the pressure and excitement of playing a post-season event on your home course.”
The tournament runs through Sunday with 18 holes scheduled each day and admission is free. Live scoring for the event can be found by following the link at www.LSUsports.net or at www.golfstat.com.