LSU Gold

Women's Golf Set for Soggy Start to SEC's

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Women's Golf Set for Soggy Start to SEC's

BATON ROUGE – The No. 4 ranked LSU women’s golf team looks to continue the momentum of the last five tournaments of the regular season when they tee off Friday morning in what could be a potentially soggy start to the 2015 Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championships at the Greystone Golf and Country Club.

Thursday’s practice round was stopped by rain after all teams had played five holes in a shotgun start late in the morning. The teams were allowed back on the course shortly after 4 p.m. to walk the course and putt on the practice green, but the teams were not permitted to finish the round because of the heavy rains during the early afternoon.

The tournament will now start with a shotgun format instead of the normal tee times at least 90 minutes later than scheduled at 10 a.m. with that time possibly in question based on the condition of the course.

“Rain, rain go away, come again another weekend,” LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen smiled as she thought about the weather forecast which is calling for 60 percent chance of rain Friday, 50 percent Saturday and 90 percent on Sunday.

The tournament is being played at Greystone’s Legacy Course for the first time after two years at the Founder’s Course in 2013 and 2014. The Founder’s Course is being prepared for a Champion’s Tour event next year. The course will play to a par of 72 and 6,308 yards.

“We are looking forward to it. It’s a golf course that drains well,” Bahnsen said. “Our team is ready and we are very excited about how the team has stayed in the moment all spring and worked so hard to prepare for each event.”

LSU comes in having finished 1-2-1-2-1 in the last five tournaments, with the Lady Tigers having multiple wins for the first time since 2012. LSU also comes in with three individual winners this year – Madelene Sagstrom and Caroline Nistrup tying for first in the AllState Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate and Elise Bradley won the LSU Tiger Golf Classic in LSU’s last start in a playoff.

Sagstrom, Nistrup and Bradley are ranked in the top 20 in the national Golfweek rankings with Sagstrom ranked second in the nation, Nistrup 15th and Bradley at No. 19. Sagstrom has a stroke average of 71.17, the second lowest active roster in the league with Nistrup at 72.25 and Bradley 72.42. The rest of the

Sagstrom is a senior from Sweden, Nistrup is a sophomore from Denmark and Bradley a junior from Mandeville, Louisiana, who is having one of the most improved seasons in college golf this year. Rounding out the LSU lineup is Carly Ray Goldstein, a sophomore from Coral Springs, Florida with a 75.42 average and freshman Claudia De Antonio of Caracas, Venezuela. De Antonio is playing in her third event of her college career.

LSU, which moved up two spots in the Golfstat performance rankings, will be paired with No. 2 South Carolina and No. 8 Mississippi State in what was to be the featured tee time wave but will be the groups that start on holes 1-3.

Other rankings include Arkansas at No. 9 nationally, Texas A&M at No. 13, Tennessee 14, Vandy at No. 17 and Florida at No. 19.

Live scoring for the SEC Championships can be found at golfstatresults.com.