BATON ROUGE – Three members of the 2014-15 LSU women’s golf team will open play for their respective countries Wednesday in the 2014 World Amateur Team Championships in Karuizama, Japan, from Sept. 3-6.
Senior Madelene Sagstrom will represent Sweden, junior Nadine Dreher will represent Austria and sophomore Caroline Nistrup will represent her home country of Denmark.
The Prince Hotel Resort’s Iriyama and Oshitate courses will be used for the championship which will mark the 20th competition for the Espirito Santo Trophy.
Sagstrom led the LSU team in stroke average as a junior at 73.28, earning her first college win last season at the Schooner Fall Classic in Norman, Okla. Sweden had a good showing in the European Championships that Sagstrom played in this summer, finishing sixth. A lot of that event was match play where the World Championships is all stroke play with three players taking the two lowest scores to make up the team’s score for the day.
Sagstrom’s country, Sweden, has won the championship on two occasions – 2004 and 2008.
Dreher averaged 77.83 for the 2013-14 season for the Lady Tigers, but also had a good summer playing in the European Team event for Austria and then finishing in a tie for fifth in the International Austrian Amateur event in which she posted 3-over 216 for 54 holes.
Nistrup had a strong freshman campaign for the Lady Tigers, earning a spot among the top first-year players in the league. She was named to the All-SEC freshman team after averaging 73.55 with three top five finishes. Nistrup finished in a tie for ninth in the European Women’s Amateur Championships shooting 69 in the final round to finish the 72 holes at even par 288.
Teams from 51 different countries will play four rounds in the play-three-count-two format. The team with the lowest 72-hole total will win. South Korea has won two consecutive tournaments (2012, 2010), while the United States has not come out on top since 1998.
Live scoring can be found at www.igfgolf.org/watc and live video at movie.worldamateur2014.org.
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