BATON ROUGE – With temperatures hovering near 100 degrees at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, LSU players Latanna Stone and Rocio Tejedo won their round of 64 matches Wednesday in the United States Women’s Amateur golf tournament.
Stone, who completed her LSU career in May at the NCAA Championships, was a 4&2 winner over Cory Lopez of Mexico while Tejedo, who will start her freshman season at LSU this fall, had a 5&3 triumph over Jessica Guiser of Wisconsin.
That puts the LSU players into the round of 32 which will be played Thursday morning. The round of 16 will take place in the afternoon and will be televised on the Golf Channel at 2 p.m. CT.
Stone, who qualified at No. 19, against Lopez, who will be a senior at Arkansas this fall. Lopez was No. 46 on the 64-player match play tree.
The Riverview, Florida native never trailed in the match and after three holes wins was 2UP heading to the back nine. A par on the 10th hole pushed Stone’s lead to 3UP before Lopez parred the par 3 11th to cut the margin to 2UP. But Stone reversed in on the par 4 12 as her par moved the match back to 3UP. She closed it out with a birdie on the par 5 16th to advance.
Tejedo and Guiser’s match was a match involving two SEC incoming freshman with Guiser slated to play at Florida this year. Guiser won the first hole to go 1UP, but Tejedo moved to the lead with par 4s on the third and fourth holes. Tejedo took control of the match by going par-par-par on the eighth, ninth and 10th holes to go 4UP with eight to play. A par 4 on the 12th hole by Guiser cut the lead to 3UP, but Tejedo responded back with and eagle on the par 5 13th and a par on the par 4 15th to win the match.
It appeared that a rematch of last year’s amateur championship match was in the offing for Stone in the round of 32, but No. 51 Catherine Rao defeated defending champion Megan Schofill, 2&1. Rao will be a junior at Princeton this fall.
Tejedo will meet No. 2 seed, Melanie Green, a 4&3 winner over another Spaniard, Paula Martin Sampedro. Green will be a senior at USF this coming season.