LSU's Latanna Stone Helps USA Get Opening Point In Arnold Palmer Cup
Latanna Stone tees off with Liscannor Bay behind her at Lahinch in Ireland. Photo by Britt Runion.
BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Latanna Stone helped get the United States team an early point in the opening day of team play in the annual Arnold Palmer Cup at the Lahinch Country Club in Ireland on Friday.
Stone, teamed with Missouri’s Jack Lundin in the mixed foursomes (four ball) match, defeated the team of Hannah Darling of Scotland (South Carolina) and South African Ben Van Wyk (Georgia), 3&2, in a match that featured all Southeastern Conference golfers.
The International team leads after the first day of play, 6.5-5.5. The first team to win 30.5 points by Sunday will win the cup. The USA team needs 30 points to keep the cup after winning last year.
LSU Head Women’s Coach and Team USA Co-Captain Garrett Runion elected to send Stone and Lundin out first in the 12 matches and they responded with a 3UP lead after three holes, going birdie-birdie-par to get the advantage.
The Darling-Van Wyk team captured the fourth and fifth holes to take the USA lead down to 1UP, but Stone and Lundin never gave up the advantage in the match. The duo pushed the lead back to 2UP with a birdie on the par 4 13th and put the match away with a par on the 16th hole to end play.
Stone now has a 5-3-4 record in Palmer Cup matches as she is making her fourth appearance in the annual matches involving college players from the USA and Europe.
“It seems like it’s been a long time coming but the wait is finally over and it felt good to get the Arnold Palmer Cup underway,” said Runion Friday evening from Ireland. “(Friday) was the best weather we have seen all week and we still had sun, clouds, rain, wind and cold. It was good to have our own Latanna Stone hit the opening tee shot and put the first point on the board.
“As a team, the matches were pretty even with six matches going to the 18th hole. The U.S. had five matches where they never trailed.”
Saturday will be a 36-hole day for some of the golfers in alternate shot play as the women and men will team in separate matches before an afternoon round of mixed alternate shot. Sunday will feature 24 singles matches to determine the Cup winner.
“Saturday is a big day and a long day playing foursomes and mix foursomes with a lot o of points available. The atmosphere and support of the town was incredible and made the matches exciting to watch,” said Runion.
In the opening set of matches, Stone will be out in the last match of the morning off hole 10 at 9:20 a.m. Irish Summer Time (3:20 a.m. Baton Rouge time) with Anna Morgan of Furman, who was the Southern Conference Player of the Year. They will face from the International team Emma Bunch (Denmark) of New Mexico State and Mirabel Ting (Malaysia) of Florida State.
Live scoring can be found at Golfstat.com.