ORLANDO, Fla. — A small version of Ryder Cup play meets collegiate golf as the LSU women’s golf team concludes its fall season beginning Friday in the Hooters Match Play Championship at the Eagle Creek Golf Club.
A total of 16 women’s teams will take part in the match play championship with each team guaranteed four matches through championship and consolation brackets in the event which runs through Sunday. Unlike normal collegiate golf, it won’t be the four top scores counting for a team total, but all five girls on a team will compete in singles matches with the first team to three winning the match and moving on.
LSU, ranked 26th in the national Golfstat results poll, is the 12th seed in this year’s event and will face off against Wake Forest, the fifth seed. The Demon Deacons will have the statistical advantage on paper if they play their top five players, but in one round of match play, there are plenty of things that can happen.
LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen took six players for the event as unlike regular college tournaments, the lineup can change and individuals can be inserted in each match. The senior South African twins, Melissa and Nicola Eaton, are there along with juniors Rebecca Kuhn, Kim Meck and Alexis Rather, the quintet that play in LSU first four events will face Wake Forest. Bahnsen has also brought sophomore Caroline Martens, from Oslo, Norway, and she could make her season debut in this event.
Martens played most of the spring season as a freshman and was among the five that played for LSU in the NCAA Division I Championships.
In the other first-round matches that all begin with a shotgun start around the course at 6:30 a.m. CST, top-seed Georgia will meeting 16th seed Nebraska, No. 2 Duke faces 15th-seed South Carolina, No. 3 Auburn gets No. 14 Alabama in an all-SEC match, fourth seed Vanderbilt faces SMU (13), sixth seed Arizona takes on No. 11 Michigan State, Florida State (7) meets Florida (10) in a bracket maker’s dream rivalry match and in the 8-9 contest Purdue faces Arkansas.
LSU will play either the winner or loser of the Vanderbilt-SMU first rounder in a second round match that is expected to begin early in the afternoon on Friday. It is expected that some of the second round matches may carry over to early Saturday morning because of being unable to finish before darkness.
“This is a fun way to close out the fall season,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “More than anything it should provide some good lessons for our players on playing each hole as an individual event and moving on. If you lose a hole, it’s over, move on and go attack the next hole. We are pleased to be a part of the field and looking forward to seeing how it goes over the next few days. It will be interesting to see how we finish matches, something that has been a struggle for us when we’ve had a chance for a good result.”
Each match is worth a point and a tied match after 18 holes in the first two rounds is deemed a half a point for each team. If a match ties at 2.5 points each, the number of actual holes each individual match won for their team is the first tiebreaker and then a comparison of the number of holes remaining in each match won.
The event runs through Sunday and live scoring will be available at www.golfstat.com.