BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s golf team, practicing for its first event of the fall season, is ranked 13th in the country in the Golfweek Women’s Golf Preseason Top 30.
The Lady Tigers open the fall season at the College of Charleston’s Cougar Classic, Sept. 13-14. It is the first of four tournaments for Coach Karen Bahnsen‘s team.
Senior Brooke Shelton returns for her senior season with the Lady Tigers, coming off a strong season in which she had four top 10 finishes and the team’s best stroke average of 75.93 per round. Junior Vicky Meyer had three top 10 for LSU with an average of 76.59.
Also back for the LSU team will be the South African twins, Melissa and Nicola Eaton, along with Alexis Rather (all three are sophomores). The Tigers have three new players with outstanding credentials joining the team — Heather Hoffman of Kingwood, Texas, Rebecca Kuhn of Miami, Fla., and Kimberly Meck of Austin, Texas — along with red shirt sophomore Rebecca Struthers of Baton Rouge.
UCLA is the No. 1 team in the poll followed by Georgia of the Southeastern Conference. Duke, Southern California and Oklahoma State round out the top five, followed by Auburn, Washington, Wake Forest, Stanford and New Mexico in spots six through 10. Texas and Texas A&M are the two teams directly in front of the Lady Tigers. Arizona State, Tennessee, UNLV, Missouri, Pepperdine, Arizona and California make up the rest of the top 20.
Teams of note in the final 10 in the preseason rankings are Tulane at No. 22 and Florida at No. 25.
“We have worked very hard to get ourselves strongly back in the national picture,” Bahnsen, in her 21st year as the head coach of the Lady Tigers said. “We were a tournament winner last year and remained in contention in many events until the very end, including the NCAA Regional. We have a good blend of veteran players back who understand what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of collegiate golf and some young players who are certainly eager to pick up on the success of the LSU program.”
The Golf World women’s coaches’ poll preseason edition has also come out and the Lady Tigers are 23 in that Top 25 poll. Again UCLA is the No.1 team in the preseason, but Georgia and Duke are flipped in this poll with Duke second and Georgia third. Auburn is fourth, Tennessee 12, Vanderbilt 14 and Florida 20.
LSU will again host the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge. The 2005 dates for that event are March 18-20 with the highly popular College-Am set for March 17.