BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s golf team, 13th in the women’s golf coaches poll, opens its spring season of play Monday in the Central District Classic Tournament in Parrish, Fla.
The tournament, actually hosted by Michigan State University, will be played at the River Wilderness Country Club, a par 72 course of just over 6,000 yards.
The Lady Tigers are the defending champions of this event that will feature 36 holes of play on Monday and the final 18 holes of the 54-hole event on Tuesday. Last year, LSU shot rounds of 295-298-310 — 903 to win the tournament.
LSU already has a win this season, in the opening event hosted by the College of Charleston. The Lady Tigers were third in the final fall event, the SEC/ACC Challenge at Sandestin, Fla.
LSU is ranked 14th in the GolfWeek/Sagarin performance rankings and in the Central District field along with the Lady Tigers and the host Michigan State team will be Arkansas, Baylor, Indiana, Kansas State, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, SMU, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.
The Lady Tigers will play four tournaments in the spring, also participating in events hosted by the University of South Carolina and a return visit to the Liz Murphey Classic in Athens, Ga. LSU will also its annual spring event, the LSU/Cleveland Classic, March 18-20, at the University Club. Applications are now being taken for the annual college-am for that tournament on March 17. Entry blanks are available at the University Club or through the women’s golf office at LSU.
LSU will go with a lineup of senior Brooke Shelton, junior Vicky Meyer, sophomore Nicola Eaton and freshmen Kimberly Meck and Rebecca Kuhn.
“We are looking forward to getting back in action,” said LSU Women’s Golf Coach Karen Bahnsen. “We had success in this tournament last year and look forward to getting the spring season off on the right foot. It is a building process to our home tournament and then to post-season that hopefully will get us to the national championship event in Sunriver, Ore. We have been working hard and the main thing is our team is looking forward to starting (Monday).”
Live scoring for the event can be found at www.golfstat.com.