BATON ROUGE — The nationally ranked LSU women’s golf team plays its second tournament of the fall season starting Friday at the Mason Rudolph Championships hosted by Vanderbilt.
The tournament will be played at Nashville’s Ironhorse Course of the Legends Club (par 72). The 54-hole event calls for 18 holes each day through Sunday.
LSU is ranked 10th in the nation in the latest women’s golf coaches poll announced Wednesday night on College Central on The Golf Channel. The Lady Tigers are coming off a successful opening tournament in which they beat 15 other teams to win the College of Charleston Cougar Classic earlier this month.
This field promises to be a much tougher test for LSU as the top three teams in the current poll — UCLA, Duke and defending champion Georgia — are all set to take part. Also in the event along with LSU and Vanderbilt are: Furman, North Carolina State, SMU, Tulane, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wake Forest.
“This is growing to be a very strong early season tournament and a great week of golf here with the men having played here earlier in the week,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “We certainly can’t rest on our laurels. This is a very difficult field and we have to be ready to go to stay anywhere close to contention.”
LSU will go with the same quintet that won the opening Cougar Classic — senior Brooke Shelton, junior Vicky Meyer, sophomore Melissa Eaton and freshmen Rebecca Kuhn and Kimberly Meck.
Meyer had rounds of 71-71-72 to finish in a tie for third in the Cougar Classic at two-under 214, her best LSU finish, and Shelton had a college career low round of 70 in the final round of the tournament to help seal the win and finished in a tie for seventh at one-over 217. Kuhn (in 13th) and Eaton (tied for 16th) also cracked the top 20.
This is the second of four fall tournaments and will be the start of a busy two weeks for the Lady Tigers as they tee off in the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Classic in Knoxville on Oct. 8.