BRYAN, Texas – The fifth-ranked LSU women’s golf team finished its preparation for the 2011 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship Tuesday afternoon here at the Traditions Club and Coach Karen Bahnsen called her 10th team to go to the finals “ready to play.”
The Lady Tigers, as the second seed from the Central Regional, will play in the final wave of the afternoon (playing late-early the first two rounds) with North Carolina (East 2) and Tennessee (West 2) beginning at 1:25 p.m. CST. The tournament begins at 8 a.m. with the first six of 24 teams playing the first of what is a rarity in college golf – 72 holes – in a tournament that concludes on Saturday afternoon.
Temperatures are expected to be in the high 80s with winds of around 20 miles per hour expected during parts of the day and a 30 percent chance of measurable rain, something that has only happened here once in the last 113 days.
The course will play to a par of 72, but relatively short at 6,260 yards. Like the NCAA Preview when LSU finished second with a score of 14-under 850, scores have a chance to be low, but it will depend a lot on where the NCAA and USGA officials decide on the pin placements.
Coach Bahnsen, in her 27th year as LSU’s head coach, likes the way her players are responding after a second place regional finish and a good couple of days of practice.
“I thought we had two really good practice rounds,” said Bahnsen. “I thought we got a very good feel for the golf course and got a lot accomplished. “The girls really like this golf course and feel good on it. It’s just a matter of going out the next few days and managing their game. Go out and have fun; that’s what it’s all about. Go out relaxed. The last time we were here we just went out and tried to eliminate mental mistakes and that’s what we need to do again to play really smart golf.”
The Lady Tigers will go with the same lineup that got them a third place finish in the SECs (their best since 2004) and a second in the NCAA regional (equaling their best ever) as they tee off in the championships for the third time in the last four years.
A lot of eyes will be on Stuart, Fla., LSU senior Megan McChrystal after her school, course and championship record round of 64 to close things out last year in Wilmington when she advanced as an individual. She won the Fall Preview on this course in similar fashion, shooting a final round of 65 to get the win. When she hits her first shot Wednesday, she will become just the third player in the 30-plus year history of LSU women’s golf to appear in four NCAA championships.
McChrystal, who will graduate in absentia on Friday and then begin play on the Futures tour shortly after the championship, is averaging 72.0 strokes per round and is coming off her fifth career victory in the NCAA Regional.
“I’m ready,” said McChrystal remembering last year being without her teammates. “It’s very lonely so I’m very happy that all our hard work has paid off and we can play together in the Championships.”
Freshman Austin Ernst of Seneca, S.C. is trying to duplicate what McChrystal did last year, finishing in the top 10 in all three post-season events – the SECs, the Regional and the Championship. Ernst was ninth in the SECs and tied for third in the regional. Ernst, with a tournament win this year, averaged 73.7 strokes a round.
The rest of the lineup as juniors Jacqueline Hedwall (74.8) and Tessa Teachman (75.3) with senior Amalie Valle (76.3) rounding out the lineup. Teachman tied for fourth in the Preview at 5-under 211.
So with Ernst the only player not to tee it up in the Championship, Bahnsen knows experience is on her side as she tries to get the Lady Tigers in the top 10 for the first time since 2000 and in line to equal the school’s best finish of fifth in 1998.
“I don’t have to explain to them what this is all about,” Bahnsen said. “When we put ourselves in the position of contending for a national championship, that will be a new thing to them but we’ve been kind of under the radar and that’s how we are going to play it. I’m okay with that. I want us to go play and quietly do what we have to do.”
That radar may be closing in on LSU a bit as Ryan Herrington of GolfWorld put LSU in his five teams to watch that have a chance to win the title this week. He put LSU at 25-1 odds with his other five Purdue (20-1), UCLA (12-1), Alabama (9-1) and USC (8-1).
The 24-team field and their Golfstat rankings: 1 seeds(East, Central, West): Alabama (3), UCLA (2), USC (1); 2 seeds: North Carolina (16), LSU (7), Tennessee (9); 3 seeds: Arizona State (10), Minnesota (39), Virginia (5); 4 seeds: Coastal Carolina (41), Arkansas (11), UC Davis (14); 5 seeds: California (12), Notre Dame (18), Arizona (6); 6. Purdue (4), Ohio State (28), South Carolina (32); 7 seeds: Florida (25); Stanford (23); Washington (36); 8 seeds: Vanderbilt (22), Wake Forest (13), Texas A&M (27).
Live scoring for the event can be found at LSUsports.net through NCAA.com. This is different from the normal Golfstat.com site that handles regular season events. Golfstat.com does have a link on its home page to the NCAA.com location.
Follow updates throughout the day on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LSUwomensgolf and on Twitter @LSUwomensgolf.
NOTES – Tuesday night the teams took part in the annual ice cream social which also serves as a chance for the NCAA to gather all the participants together for a rules meeting that also includes a stern lecture on pace-of-play … The hope is for the participants to get around the course in four hours and 30 minutes but with the distance between holes and shuttles, that may be a difficult task and an even tougher task for those spectators trying to keep up with a team on the course … Tulane’s Maribel Lopez Porras is one of the six individual competitors who advanced from players not on the 24 competing teams … Porras a sophomore from Bogota, Colombia, had to win a playoff to advance to the championship after tying for eighth in the NCAA Central Regional.