ANTALYA, Turkey – LSU sophomore Madelene Sagstrom will compete for her home country of Sweden beginning Thursday in the 2012 Women’s World Amateur Team Championship over the Old and New Courses at the Gloria Golf Club.
A record 56 teams have entered the 2012 Women’s World Amateur Team Championship. The biennial competition has been played since 1964, with the winner taking home the Espirito Santo Trophy. Korea won the 2010 title in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where it set the championship record for lowest team score with a 30-under 546, finishing 17 strokes ahead of the runner-up, the USA. The USA last won the championship in 1998, and has captured the trophy a record 13 times.
The World Amateur Team title is determined by four days of stroke play. A country may field a team of two or three players. In each round, the total of the two lowest scores constitutes the team score for the round. The four-day total is the team’s score for the championship.
Sagstrom was an All-Freshman team Southeastern Conference selection a year ago and helped the Lady Tigers to a third place finish in the NCAA Women’s Championships. She averaged 73.6 strokes per round. She will be joined by Daniela Holmqvist and Nathalie Mansson on the Swedish team. Holmqvist has finished her career at the University of California (playing a portion of it at Tulane) and Mansson also recently finished her career at the University of Tennessee.
The World Amateur Team Championships are conducted by the International Golf Federation, which was founded in 1958 to encourage the international development of the game and to employ golf as a vehicle to foster friendship and sportsmanship. The IGF, the International Olympic Committee’s international federation for golf, comprises the national governing bodies of golf in more than 125 countries, and is the organization that will conduct the golf competition at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.