Tiger Golfers Advance to SEC Women's Match Play; Riley, Tejedo Finish T-2

BELLEAIR, Florida – The No. 11 LSU women’s golf team easily advanced into the match play portion of the Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championship which concluded its stroke play portion on Wednesday at the Pelican Golf Club.

The Tigers finished 54-holes of stroke play qualifying at 10-under par 830 on rounds of 275-279-276, all three rounds under par. LSU will be the No. 2 seed for the match play quarterfinals which will begin at 8 a.m. ET (7 a.m. Baton Rouge time) on Thursday.

It is the fifth straight championship in which LSU has advanced out of stroke play into match play. In the last four years, LSU has made the match play semifinals and in 2022 captured the SEC title.

LSU and No. 1 seed South Carolina are the only teams to advance to match play each of the last five years.

“I’ve been very pleased with how things have gone,” said Coach Garrett Runion, in his sixth SEC Women’s Championship event in his seven years as head coach. “I feel like we had a good prep for this coming in. It’s nice to see that our plan and a good practice round here on Sunday and then we played three disciplined rounds of golf. Good team golf.

“I think I keep going back to our drop score (the fifth score in the play five-count four format),” he said. “Our drop score (Wednesday) was one over. We had some of the lowest drop scores of any team in the tournament. When you are consistent like that everybody is in it. It’s tough to be that consistent and we are going to need that when we go into match play.”

LSU also had great success in the individual portion of the tournament as both junior Taylor Riley and freshman Rocio Tejedo captured second place in the 54-hole competition at 5-under par 205 on the par 70 layout.

South Carolina is the No. 1 seed for the second straight year after posting 16-under par 824 on rounds of 266-274-284 with Texas, in its first SEC championships, the No. 3 seed at 5-under 835. Ole Miss will be the fourth seed at 1-under 839.

Ole Miss will meet state rival Mississippi State as the Bulldogs came home at the six seed at 1-over 841. The Bulldogs shot 6-under 274 on the final day. Arkansas rallied in the final round to get the sixth seed at 5-over 845 with Florida in seventh at 846. The Gators will be LSU’s opponent in the quarterfinal match.

Tennessee finished at 7-over-par 847 and earned the final match play spot. Last year, LSU rallied in the final round to get eighth in the tournament’s first appearance here at 21-over par.

Riley, from San Diego, was in the thick of the individual race during the final day as the top of the leaderboard began to show movement. A birdie on the par 4 fifth hole actually tied her for the lead and she turned with the lead after a nice birdie on the par three ninth.

Riley finished with five birdies on her card and a 1-under 69 to finish at 5-under par 205 with three rounds in the 60s of 68-68-69. Riley has now finished top 10 in each of the last two tournaments for the Tigers.

Tejedo, from Spain, had her game going as well with three birdies and no bogeys in a 3-under par round of 67 which got her to 5-under as well on rounds of 68-72-67. In fact, Tejedo did not have a bogey over her last 28 holes of play. This was Tejedo’s sixth top 10 finish of the 2024-25 wraparound college season.

Farah O’Keefe was the other player to tie for second with the LSU players at 5-under 205 (67-70-68).

Caitlyn Macnab of Ole Miss, shot 31 on her final nine holes to win the individual competition with a final round 65 to put her at 9-under par 201 (68-68-65).

“I am extremely happy for Taylor and Rocio,” said Coach Runion. “They played great this week, especially Rocio and her first SEC Championship as a freshman to get runner up. I know she wanted to win, but it is still a very strong showing. Taylor Riley, I mean to step up her play the last few weeks, two top 10s has been outstanding. She’s playing great at the end of the year here and had a chance to win as well.”

LSU also had a 1-under 69 from Irish senior Aine Donegan in her final SEC Championship as she birdied the difficult par 4 18th to end her stroke play competition. Senior Elsa Svensson and freshman Josefin Widal, both from Sweden, each had 1-over 71s.

Donegan and Svensson both finished in a tie for 18th place at 1-over par 211. Donegan had rounds of 72-70-69 and Svensson posted 71-69-71.

LSU split its two match play rounds earlier this year in the East Lake Cup with the same lineup.

The Gators and Tigers last met in the 2022 Championship match of the SECs with the Tigers coming out on top, 4-1, in Birmingham to win its second ever SEC Women’s Championship.

There are five individual matches and the first team to three advances to the semifinals later on Thursday.

“We talked about being the number two seed when we won in 2022,” said Coach Runion. “We wanted a higher seed because we can defer with match play lineup selection which is good. It was just a clean scorecard today and now the second tournament starts. You’ve got to play well in the first tournament to get into the second tournament and they did that. Now your mind shifts. I know they are looking forward to it and ready to go. We are going to go out there still trying to be on the offensive side of things and have the mindset that they have to beat you and don’t give it to them and see if we can’t get three points.”

LSU will send out the players in this order at 8:50 a.m. ET (7:50 a.m. CT): Donegan, Svensson, Tejedo, Widal, Riley. The LSU match will be the second match off the first tee.

The SECN+ will have the streaming coverage of the two semifinal matches beginning at approximately 3:30 p.m. ET (2:30 p.m. CT) with Taylor Zarzour, Steve Melnyk, Julia Johnson and Peter Burns on the call. The championship match is set for 10 a.m. ET (9 a.m. CT) on Friday.

Live scoring is available on Golfstat.com and updates during the quarterfinal match for LSU can be found on “X” @LSUwomensgolf and @LSUKent.

SEC Women’s Golf Championships
Belleair, Florida – Pelican Golf Club
Final Stroke Play Qualifying Results (Top 8 to Match Play)
NCAA Rankings Courtesy of Scoreboard
1 South Carolina – 266-274-284 – 824 -16
2 LSU – 275-279-276 – 830 -10
3 Texas – 279-280-276 – 835 -5
4 Ole Miss – 279-283-277 – 839 -1
5 Mississippi State — 283-284-274 – 841 +1
6 Arkansas – 288-280-277 – 845 +5
7 Florida – 282-286-278 – 846 +6
8 Tennessee 283-283-281 – 847 +7
9 Auburn 276-289-288 – 853 +13
10 Texas A&M 284-283-294 – 861 +21
11 Kentucky – 286-292-284 – 862 +22
12 Alabama 286-284-293 – 863 +23
13 Missouri 288-297-284 – 869 +29
14 Oklahoma 288-296-288 – 872 +32
15 Vanderbilt 288-302-290 – 880 +40
16 Georgia 306-298-293 – 898 +58

Individual Top 5 (Par 70-210)
1 Caitlyn Macnab, Ole Miss – 68-68-65 – 201 -9
T2 Rocio Tejedo, LSU – 66-72-67 – 205 -5
T2 Farah O’Keefe, Texas – 67-70-68 – 205 -5
T2 Taylor Riley, LSU – 68-68-69 – 205 -5
T5 Lauren Kim, Texas – 69-69-68 – 206 -4
T5 Eila Galitsky, South Carolina – 65-68-73 – 206 -4

LSU Scores
T2 Rocio Tejedo – 62-72-67 – 205 -5
T2 Taylor Riley – 68-68-69 – 205 -5
T18 Aine Donegan – 72-70-69 – 211 +1
T18 Elsa Svensson – 71-69-70 – 211 +1
T31 Josefin Widal – 70-73-71—214 +4

Match Play Quarterfinals – Thursday
No. 2 LSU vs. No. 7 Florida (Best of five)
Match 1 – 8:50 AM ET – Aine Donegan (LSU) vs. Karoline Tuttle (UF)
Match 2 – 9:00 AM ET – Elsa Svensson (LSU) vs. Paula Francisco (UF)
Match 3 – 9:10 AM ET – Rocio Tejedo (LSU) vs. Ines Archer (UF)
Match 4 – 9:20 AM ET – Josefin Widal (LSU) vs. Jessica Guiser (UF)
Match 5 – 9:30 AM ET – Taylor Riley (LSU) vs. Addison Klonowski (UF)