BROWNS SUMMITT, N.C. — The LSU women’s golf team begins post-season play Thursday in one of college golf’s most unique tournaments, the NCAA East Regional Championships at the Bryan Park Golf Club’s Champions Course.
The tournament is unique in that finishing first in the tournament can feel just as good as finishing eighth in the 21-team event. There is no championship trophy and finishing in the top eight gets the teams what all are searching for — a bid to the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship in two weeks in Columbus, Ohio.
Individually, the players whose teams are fortunate to make the top eight, are then battling for the two spots that advance to the national individual competition from non-qualifying teams. Last year, in Lubbock, after LSU failed to qualify as a team, the Lady Tigers waited almost five hours that got then-senior Brooke Shelton to a playoff which she won to advance to the national championships where she finished eighth.
What LSU coach Karen Bahnsen remembers about last year’s Central Regional tournament was the fact her team missed advancing to nationals by two shots. It’s something that those who played last year remember as well and something they want to put by the wayside when they tee off at just after 8 a.m. EDT as the Lady Tigers, ranked 30th in the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Rankings, tried to get back to the final tournament for the first time since 2001.
“We were so close last year,” said Bahnsen. “We were right there. It was a disappointing way to end the season. Brooke (Shelton) got a chance to go to nationals, but it’s not the same thing as having the whole team there. We want that feeling this year.”
LSU is the ninth seed for the event, one of three regionals taking place around the country with each (the others at College Station, Texas, and Auburn, Wash.) advancing eight teams to the championships. The rest of the field in seed order have Arizona State, the number one seed, followed by Auburn, Tennessee, Wake Forest, California, Vanderbilt, Virginia, South Carolina. After LSU come Florida State, Alabama, North Carolina State, Augusta State, Maryland, Furman, North Carolina, Mississippi State, Campbell, College of Charleston, East Carolina and Yale.
In all, 10 SEC teams advanced to one of the three regional sites.
LSU and all the teams were on the course Wednesday for a practice round. The Rees Jones-designed layout will play at 6,386 yards and as advertised, many of the 97 sand traps will come into play and the seven holes that border Lake Townsend (mainly at the start of the final nine holes) can prove to be more difficult than they look because of strong lake winds. There is a 40 percent chance of showers during the morning wave on Thursday.
The Lady Tigers have shown a greater consistency in scoring in the last two events, the SEC Championships and the Lady Buckeye Spring Invite, posting two of the lowest 54-hole totals of the season. That will be what they will need again to have a chance to qualifying for nationals, being able to put together four scores consistently on all three days.
“We have been posting better scores from top to bottom the last couple of events,” said Bahnsen, taking her Lady Tigers to the NCAA Regionals for the 12th time in the last 14 years. “We are very capable of qualifying if we continue to do the things we need to do. This is a very demanding course, with plenty of hill and large greens so placement is very important. We have to take it shot-to-shot and not let one mistake ruin the rest of the round. We just need to put ourselves in a position to compete and be in the hunt as the tournament goes on.”
LSU’s lineup is led by junior Melissa Eaton who ranks 17th in the SEC in stroke average and 94th in the nation in the GolfWeek/Sagarin rankings with a 75.1 stroke average. Eaton this spring posted a six-under 66 in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic when she finished second in the individual competition and 68 in the SEC Championships, where she tied for fifth.
Along with Eaton will be sophomores Alexis Rather (76.0 stroke average), Rebecca Kuhn (76.1) and Kim Meck (77.0) and freshman Caroline Martens (76.3). This has been the same lineup that LSU used in the last two tournaments when the Lady Tigers posted 54 hole scores of 900 and 894.
The 54-hole tournament runs through Saturday with 18 holes of play each day. Live scoring for the event during the day will be available at www.golfstat.com.