BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s golf team, ranked 13th in the pre-season Golfweek rankings, open the 2004 fall season Monday in the Cougar Classic at Hanahan, S.C.
The tournament will be played at the Yeamans Hall Golf Club that will play to a par 72 and 6,031 yards for the championship.
Joining LSU and host College of Charleston in the event will be Campbell, Charleston Southern, East Carolina, Florida State, Furman, Kentucky, Maryland, Miami, Ole Miss, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Richmond, South Florida, Tennessee, Virginia and Wake Forest.
The Tigers are coming off a season in which they advanced to the NCAA regionals after a year’s absence, but the bigger picture is advancing back to the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships next May for the first time since 2001.
This year’s team certainly has a makeup that is similar to years when the Lady Tigers have had their most success — a team with a good level of college experience and some outstanding freshmen — and that is certainly indicative of the lineup for LSU’s first tournament.
Coach Karen Bahnsen, entering her 21st season as the head coach, opens with two freshmen — Kim Meck of Austin, Texas, and Rebecca Kuhn of Miami — both of who enter their college careers ranked in the top 35 of the Golfweek junior rankings after stellar high school careers. Junior Vicky Meyer of Brazil, South African sophomore Melissa Eaton and Plano, Texas Brooke Shelton will join them.
Shelton led the team last year with four top 10s and a 75.93 stroke average, while Meyer was second at 76.59 with three top 10s to lead the 2003-04 squad to several top three finishes, including a win in the Central District Championships and an impressive tie for second in the Southeastern Conference Women’s Championships in Baton Rouge.
“I am very pleased that people who know feel we are good enough to be ranked 13th in the preseason poll,” said Coach Bahnsen, as her team prepared to leave Saturday for the opener. “We have the type of team that handle that and I think possibly can be even better. This appears to be a special group that is really committed to doing the little things to have success. They do remind me of some of our other teams that have had success in the past and we are looking forward to getting out there for the first time in team competition and seeing what happens.”
This is the first of four fall tournaments for the Lady Tigers, who will next be in action Oct. 1-3 at the Mason Rudolph Championships in Nashville followed by the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Championships in Knoxville, Oct. 8-10. The fall season concludes with the ACC/SEC Challenge at Destin, Fla., Oct. 29-31.
LSU will host its annual LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic as part of the spring portion of the schedule, March 18-20.
The Cougar Classic will feature 36 holes of play on Monday with the final round scheduled for Tuesday. Live scoring for the event can be found at www.Golfstat.com.