FRANKLIN, Tenn. — The ninth-ranked LSU women’s golf team, coming off a victory in its first tournament of the fall season, gets back on the course starting Friday at the annual Vanderbilt Mason Rudolph Women’s Championship here at the Vanderbilt Legends Club.
The tournament has drawn a strong field with 12 of the 17 teams ranked in the top 25 in the pre-season polls, including No. 1 Arizona State, No. 2 USC, No. 3 UCLA and No. 4 Oklahoma State. Also in the top 10 besides LSU are Alabama, Auburn, Virginia and Duke.
Also in the field are host Vanderbilt, along with Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Stanford, Texas and Tulane.
LSU is coming off a win in the National Golf Coaches Association Match Play Championships in which the Tigers were able to take our Georgia, Florida and Auburn in impressive fashion to capture their first title of the year. But this event reverts back to the normal 54-hole medal play format and the tournament has one of the strongest fields a team could face outside the NCAA finals.
“This will be a tough test for our team,” said LSU women’s golf coach Karen Bahnsen. “But they have certainly proven to be up for the challenge. This team has so much desire and they want to play the best to see where they stack up. We are coming off a good win, but there are some teams we didn’t see in that event and it’s good to get back playing again.”
LSU will go with the lineup that won all three matches in the match play portion of the first tournament with juniors Megan McChrystal and Amalie Valle, sophomores Jacqueline Hedwall and Tessa Teachman and freshman Mary Michael Maggio.
All five players had big moments in the match play championship over Labor Day with Maggio, of Conway, Ark., certainly showing she was not intimidated with the move from high school to collegiate golf.
The tournament is scheduled for 18 holes each day through Sunday with live scoring available at LSUsports.net through golfstat.com.