BATON ROUGE – The LSU women’s golf team starts a spring season that will include hosting two tournaments Sunday in the first round of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship.
The 54-hole three-day event will be contested over the 6,239-layout of the English Turn Golf and Country Club.
The first round gets underway Sunday at 9 a.m. with starting groups off both holes 1 and 10. LSU will tee off in the final wave off the first tee beginning at 10:30 a.m., playing with Florida and Virginia. Also in the field of 17 with Florida, Virginia and LSU along with host Tulane (playing in 9 a.m. wave) are Alabama, Arizona, Clemson, Denver, Miami, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Oklahoma State, Stanford, Texas UC Davis, UCF and UCLA.
Coach Karen Bahnsen‘s Lady Tigers won the tournament a year ago with a 10-over par 874 and Madelene Sagstrom and Caroline Nistrup were the co-medalists of the championship at 4-under 212. Sagstrom was shooting a course record 64 in her first round in the Symetra Tour on Friday and Nistrup is rehabbing after wrist surgery in the fall after only playing in the first two tournaments.
But LSU has some players ready to pick things up during the spring semester and the Lady Tigers lineup will feature freshman Kathleen Gallagher (74.08 average for 12 rounds); senior Elise Bradley (74.17 for 12 rounds); senior Nadine Dreher (74.42 for 12 rounds); and sophomore Sydney Cavin (76.50 for 6 rounds).
The Lady Tigers will also have junior Carly Goldstein on the course for her first team start of the 2015-16 season with ULM transfer Lana Hodge making her season debut as an individual competitor in this event.
This is the first of four events for the Lady Tigers in the spring and the schedule features one of the annual rites of early spring, the LSU Tiger Golf Classic at the LSU University Club in Baton Rouge. For the first time, the event will be played on a Sunday-Tuesday schedule, March 20-22, with a loaded field expected to get a look at the course that will serve as the site of the 2016 NCAA Women’s Golf Regionals.
That event is set for May 5-7 and will qualify six teams to the 2016 NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon later in the month.
Prior to the LSU Tiger Classic, the Lady Tigers will tee it up in the prestigious Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, March 4-6, in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
“We are excited about getting going for the spring,” said Bahnsen. “We are still finding our stride and look forward to working hard to improve every time we step on the course as we move toward our tournament and the upcoming regional at the U-Club.”
Admission for the Sugar Bowl event at English Turn is free. Monday’s second round will begin at 9 a.m. with tee times, followed by a final round shotgun start at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
Live scoring for the tournament can be found at golfstatresults.com and updates at www.Facebook.com/LSUwomensgolf and @LSUWomensGolf.