BRYAN, Texas – The LSU Lady Tigers had their first chance to get reacquainted Monday with The Traditions Course that will host the 2011 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships beginning on Wednesday.
The 24 teams (the top eight from three regionals) and six individual qualifiers not among the 24 teams had the first of two practice rounds on Monday. LSU will have their second practice round on Tuesday at 12:12 p.m. before the 72-hole event starts that runs through Saturday.
For LSU and several teams, the practice rounds was an opportunity to see a course they saw last September in the season’s opening event, the NCAA Fall Preview.
It was the start of a three-tournament run by LSU that saw the Lady Tigers shoot a combined 51-under par for nine rounds with a win at the Mason Rudolph Championships and two second place finishes including the NCAA Fall Preview when LSU was second to Alabama. In the Preview, LSU was 14-under 850, which at that time broke the school 54-hole scoring record by 14 shots.
The LSU team, ranked as high as fifth in the polls entering the championships, is back in the event for the third time in four years, but it was the way they missed out last year that gave them a little bit of extra motivation.
LSU struggled in the final round of the 2010 regional and it was ironically, this year’s host team, Texas A&M that moved past LSU by one shot to advance in the eighth and final spot. But the Lady Tigers, using a 5-under last three holes of the first round, took hold of the second spot and never let go to easily advance and will have the favorable late-early tee times Wednesday and Thursday with the top seeds from the other regions.
“That’s very important for us to get in the same wave with the team you are going to have to beat to win a national championship,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, taking her 10th team to the national championship tournament. “Obviously, we want to be in that last wave come Saturday.”
The Lady Tigers had success on the course last time in an event that senior Megan McChrystal won the individual title, but what happened in September doesn’t guarantee much in May other than you know where each hole is located.
“It helps our confidence but we are not going to try to duplicate that event automatically,” said Bahnsen. “You can’t go back in time. We’ve got to look forward and use that good play as confidence. We just want to get out here and play the golf course and put up some good numbers and see what happens.”
For Baton Rouge junior Tessa Teachman, the NCAA Fall Preview was one she remembers as a great weekend for the team, an event she finished in a tie for fourth.
“The course is a very solid course,” said Teachman. “We all feel comfortable on it. You can attack it and it showed how well we did in the Preview. There were a lot of birdies out there. Hopefully we can go get some of them this week and hopefully we will have enough of them.”
Live scoring for the event will be available at LSUsports.net through NCAA.com. The live scoring is not available on the normal Golfstat.com site because of contractual rights for championships by the NCAA. Updates during the round will also be available on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LSUwomensgolf and on Twitter @LSUwomensgolf.