TEMPE, Ariz. — The most important golf tournament of the year for the eight-ranked LSU women’s golf team begins here Thursday and LSU doesn’t have to win the tournament to be successful.
The NCAA West Regional Women’s Golf tournament opens three days of play at the ASU Karsten Golf Course on the Arizona State University campus and as long as LSU can finish in the top eight spots on Saturday afternoon at the end of 54 holes, the Lady Tigers will be going to the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship for the second straight year and the third time in the last four years.
This year’s championship is slated for Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Md.
The West regional is one of three regional events being played over the next three days (the East in Gainesville, Fla., the Central in Columbus, Ohio) with 21 teams in each. Eight teams from each regional qualify for the Championships along with the top two individuals who are not a part of the eight teams selected.
For LSU, the regional is a familiar part of the season schedule having hosted the first East regional in 1993 at Baton Rouge’s Santa Maria Golf Course. In all, LSU has advanced to regional play 15 of the last 17 years and will be looking to go to the Championships for the 10th time in the 30 years of the program. But this is the first time the Tigers have been assigned to the West Regional.
The No. 8 Lady Tigers are the third-seed in the team field, behind only No. 2 (Golfstat, No. 1 NGCA poll) host Arizona State and No. 4 Southern California. Following LSU in the top 10 seeds with their Golfstat performance ranking are: Pepperdine (13), Arkansas (16), San Jose State (21), Arizona (22), California (20); UC Irvine (25) and San Francisco (27).
The remainder of the field starting with No. 11 seed UNLV joined by TCU, Texas A&M, Oregon, Long Beach State, Colorado, Texas, Baylor, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Northern Arizona and Oral Roberts.
The Kartsen course plays to a par of 72 off nines of 35-37 and measure at 6,286 yards. The temperature is expected to top 100 each of the three days of the tournament, but LSU will tee off early in the first round, at 10 a.m. CDT (8 a.m. MST).
“We like the golf course a lot,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen at mid-afternoon Wednesday after her team completed their practice round. “The greens are perfect and are rolling very true. This course sets up well for our girls. You’ve just got to pick out a good target and trust your shot. The course isn’t excessively long so that means there should be some low scores if they hit well. We play with Arizona State and Southern Cal the first two days and we are glad to be playing with them. The team is ready and I think they are anxious to get out there and begin.”
Last year, the Tigers proved eighth is just as good as first, winning a playoff over Florida State for the final regional qualifying position in the Central Regional in Austin, Texas. That day, former Lady Tiger Alexis Rather (now an assistant coach with Ole Miss) chipped in from off the green for the birdie that was the difference in the team playoff.
LSU will go with its lineup that has played together most of the spring season with senior Caroline Martens, sophomores Megan McChrystal and Amalie Valle and freshman Tessa Teachman and Jacqueline Hedwall.
Martens, who helped propel LSU to its 2006 NCAA bid with a fifth place finish in the NCAA East Regional, could become just the fifth LSU women’s golfer to make three NCAA Division I National Championships if the Lady Tigers qualify this year.
McChrystal earned first-team All-SEC honors and is still on pace to because the all-time single season leader in stroke average at 72.5 strokes per round. The mark that she is chasing is the 73.12 average of Meredith Duncan in the 2001-02 season. McChrystal, like the Lady Tigers, has two victories this season and is ranked 13th in the country in the Golfstat rankings. LSU’s other sophomore, Valle, is third on the team in stroke average at 74.8 strokes per round.
LSU’s two freshman starters have made a good name for themselves in their opening year in college golf. Teachman, from Baton Rouge, has been posting some of the better scores for LSU in recent tournaments and has four top 20 finishes in averaging 75.0. Hedwall is reminding everyone that she can compete just as well as her twin sister, posting two top 10s and five top 20s in recording the second lowest stroke average on the team of 74.5
As a team, LSU is averaging 294.4 and scores in that vicinity should be plenty to get LSU inside the top eight by the end of play on Saturday.
The teams are not repaired until Saturday’s final round of the 54-hole event with the top 12 teams going off early in the morning to make sure an official round can be declared in case of bad weather.
Live scoring for the West Regional can be found at LSUsports.net through Golfstat.com.