BATON ROUGE — The nationally ranked LSU women’s golf team closes out a strong fall schedule on the beaches of Florida in the fifth annual Chrysler ACC/SEC Challenge beginning Friday morning at the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Destin, Fla.
The event is played on the par 71, 5,937-yard Raven Course at the resort.
LSU enters the event as the 10th-ranked team in the National Golf Coaches Association poll with one win this fall in the Cougar Classic hosted by the College of Charleston. Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss and South Carolina from the SEC join LSU in the event, while Florida State is joined by Duke, Maryland, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Virginia from the ACC. Duke, the nation’s top-ranked team is the defending champion and senior Elizabeth Janangelo is the defending individual medallist.
Although this is the first time for LSU to play in this event, the Lady Tigers have some history on the beach courses in Destin, marking the 10th time an LSU women’s team has played on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, but the first time since 1984. That year, LSU won the Tiger-Tide Women’s Intercollegiate with a 36-hole score of 618.
LSU is expected to go with the lineup it used in its first two tournaments of the fall with senior Brooke Shelton, junior Vicky Meyer, sophomore Melissa Eaton and freshmen Kimberly Meck and Rebecca Kuhn. Meyer is 26th in the nation on the Golfweek Performance rankings with a 73.22 stroke average, while Shelton is 35th at 73.55.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how we close out the year against a top-notch field,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “This is a very special tournament and all of us in the SEC want to represent our conference the best way possible. We look forward to the weekend and by the end of it, we will have four tournaments that will give us a good gauge of what we need to do in the spring to get ready for the postseason.”
The teams will play 18 holes on Friday all off the first tee, before shotgun starts on both Saturday and Sunday to conclude the 54-hole event.