TUNICA, Miss. — The 10th-ranked LSU Lady Tigers, coming off a win and a strong second place finish in its last two tournaments, begins play here Friday in the Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championship at the Tunica National Golf Club.
The 12 league teams will play 18 holes Friday, Saturday and Sunday leading to the crowning of the conference champion and the winner of the automatic berth into the NCAA post-season regional tournaments. Several other SEC teams will also qualify for post-season play, but will have to advance as an at-large selection.
The tournament is being hosted by Ole Miss, but is being contested on a one-year-old 6,200-yard, par 72 layout designed by Mark McCumber on flat open acreage and that is leading to speculation as to how the course and scoring will be affected by the wind. That wind blew consistently some 15-20 miles per hour during the practice rounds, leaving many players with long irons and woods into greens playing against the winds.
McCumber designed the course in links fashion with the course playing off in three squares around the clubhouse so that no more than three holes at any one time are played facing the same wind direction.
LSU has only one the conference tournament one time, that in 1992, but since 1995, the Lady Tigers have posted six runner-up finishes, including last year when LSU and Auburn tied for second at 17-over par, four shots behind champion Vanderbilt.
LSU was 13-1 against the SEC in its last two tournaments, winning easily in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge (a remarkably similar course to Tunica National when it comes to wind) and a second behind only Georgia in the Liz Murphey Classic. LSU was 29-5-1 against the SEC this year.
The Lady Tigers will go with the lineup it has settled into the last couple of events with sophomore Melissa Eaton (75.00 stroke average) playing up top, followed by freshman Rebecca Kuhn (75.04), junior Vicky Meyer (75.17), senior Brooke Shelton (75.21) and freshman Kim Meck (76.90).
Along with LSU, three other SEC teams are in the top 10 in the Golfstat rankings with Georgia second, Auburn seventh and Tennessee eighth. LSU and Georgia are the only two schools in the tournament with two tournament wins this year with LSU winning its Cleveland Golf Classic and the Cougar Classic at the College of Charleston, while Georgia won its Liz Murphey Collegiate and its opening tournament, the Dick McGuire Tournament.
“This is always a top-notch event because of the depth of the field,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, leading her team into her 21st Southeastern Conference championship. “We feel very good about our focus going into this event and we have been playing well leading up to the championship. The wind is going to play a major part in this event if it continues to blow, but the girls play in it enough to know how to handle it. It appears they are going to move the tees around depending on the wind and the girls have to be able to adjust and know what they can and can’t do when that happens. Again, it is a case of staying in the moment and focusing shot by shot as we have tried to do in our recent events.”
Tennessee’s Violeta Retamoza, who lost last year in a playoff for the individual title at the conference championship in Baton Rouge, leads the league in stroke average at 72.58. She is ranked seventh in the country in the GolfWeek performance rankings, Diane Ramage of Auburn is fourth nationally, but second in the league in stroke average to Retamoza at 72.88.
LSU’s Eaton is ninth in the league in stroke average, 56th nationally, while Kuhn is 66th nationally (11th in the league). Vicky Meyer is 71st nationally and Brooke Shelton is 73rd as LSU has four golfers in the top 15 in the league.