HANAHAN, S.C. – The nationally-ranked LSU women’s golf team opens its 2012-13 season as it travels to the College of Charleston’s Cougar Classic, a tournament the Lady Tigers won a year ago.
A hefty field of 24 teams will take part in this event, including 10 of the top 15 teams from the 2012 NCAA National Championship.
“It’s a tournament that is great for starting out a season,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen, who begins her 29th season at the helm of her alma mater. “It attracts all the best teams in the country. The people are so wonderful to us. They just go out of the way to take care of the players and I think that is why all the great teams want to play here. It’s just a great site to open our season.”
LSU and host Charleston will be joined by Alabama, Auburn, Charleston Southern, Duke, Florida, Furman, Georgia, Maryland, Miami, Mississippi, North Carolina, N. C. State, Penn State, South Carolina, Tennessee, UCF, UNCG, Wake Forest, USC, Vanderbilt, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The Lady Tigers, a program best third each of the last two years in the national championship, will have a bit of a different look this year, but a group of golfers hungry to show their ability as the season moves forward.
“I feel really good about our team,” said Bahnsen. “I think we are going to do well. We have a great schedule that will allow us to grow as the season goes on and I think that is good because we don’t have the experience with the new kids, but I feel very confident in what they are going to be able to accomplish.”
Leading the Lady Tigers will be returning sophomore Madelene Sagstrom, who averaged 73.6 in stroke average in earning Freshman All-SEC honors a year ago. Sagstrom had three top fives last season in her first year, including a fourth place finish in the SEC Championships.
Junior Lindsay Gahm played in ever tournament in her first year in the program in 2012 and posted a 76.2 average and will join Sagstrom in the lineup for the opener, along with senior Katrina Hegge. Hegge averaged 77.9 in four tournaments for LSU last year.
Rounding out the lineup for the Cougar Classic for the Lady Tigers will be junior transfer Ali Lucas and freshman Nadine Dreher. Lucas, who played her first two years at ULM, is from Crowley and is a previous winner of the LWGA amateur title. Dreher hails from Vienna, Austria and has good international credentials that she brings to college golf.
The event is the first of eight events for LSU over the next eight months, including the annual renewal of the LSU Tiger Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge. This year’s event will move a couple of weeks later on the calendar to March 22-24.
The Cougar Classic will have morning and afternoon tee off waves on both Sunday and Monday with the morning wave starting at 6:50 a.m. CDT and the afternoon wave at 10:50 a.m. CDT. Live scoring will be available at LSUsports.net through Golfstatresults.com and updates during the round can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LSUwomensgolf and on Twitter at @LSUwomensgolf.
The 54-hole event runs through Tuesday.