Team USA Tied After Two Days At Palmer Cup; Stone Rallies For Tie In PM Session
LSU Women's Head Coach and Team USA Co-Captain Garrett Runion With LSU/USA's Latanna Stone (Photo by Britt Runion).
BATON ROUGE – The Arnold Palmer Cup will go Sunday’s final day all even after the Americans and the International team split foursome sessions at the Lahinch Golf Club in Ireland.
The USA squad, co-captained by LSU women’s golf coach Garrett Runion and his assistant Alexis Rather, are tied at 18-18 with the International squad after 36 matches. The Americans won the 24 matches on Saturday (foursomes and mixed foursomes), 12.5-11.5, to get the match back to all square.
It will come down to the 24 singles matches on Sunday with the Americans needing 12 points to retain the Cup which it won a year ago. The International squad will need 12.5 to bring the cup to their side.
LSU’s Latanna Stone added an important half-a-point in the afternoon match when Stone and partner Jack Lundin of Missouri tied Paula Martin Sampedro (Spain, Stanford) and Calum Scott (Scotland, Texas Tech).
It was more how the U.S. pair tied it in the final nine holes after being four down and 5-over par on the scorecard in the front nine.
After halving the 10th and 11th holes with pars, Stone and Lundin, who won in mixed four-ball on Friday, got an eagle on the par 5 12th hole up against an International birdie to close the match to 3Down. A birdie on the 13th hole cut the International lead in half to 2Down. Then another eagle win on the 15th hole dropped the Stone-Lundin deficit to one and they tied it on the par three 16th with a par.
But the drama was far from over as Sampedro and Scott won the 17th hole with a par to go back 1UP, guaranteeing at least a half-a-point for their team. But Stone and Lundin birdied the par 5 18th hole to tie the match, giving the USA a half-a-point.
Through three matches this year Stone, in her fourth Palmer Cup, is 1-1-1 and 5-4-4 in her Palmer Cup career. She is 3-0-0 in her singles matches in the event. She will face a very familiar foe in Match 21 against Julia Lopez Ramirez of Spain and Mississippi State.
Play is set to begin Sunday at 7:30 a.m. Irish Summer Time or 1:30 a.m. Baton Rouge time. Live scoring can be found on Golfstat.com.