COLUMBUS, Ohio – In the Southeastern Conference championships some three weeks ago, the goal was to finish in the top eight to go to match play.
Now the stakes are a bit higher as NCAA Women’s Golf Regional play begins at six locations around the country with the magic number at five.
Five teams from each of the six regionals advance to the NCAA Championships at Omni La Costa in Carlsbad later in the month. For the LSU women’s golf team, advancing to the championships would mark a school record five consecutive years that the Tigers have advanced.
LSU is in that position again as the No. 2 seed in the regional that begins here Monday at the famed Scarlet Course at the Ohio State University Golf Course. The course was redone in 2006 by Ohio State alum Jack Nicklaus and that was the last year the LSU was here in postseason for the national championship which was the debut event after the renovation was complete.
LSU did advance from the Scarlet Course on the pre-renovation layout in 2000.
The team had a practice round on Sunday, a somewhat soggy practice round, after some two inches of rain fell most of the day on Saturday, delaying tee times by two hours. But the forecast of temperatures in the low 50s to start and a possibly of rain late in the round will allow this competition to begin as scheduled Monday at 8 a.m. ET.
“Being able to get 54 holes in, that’s important,” said LSU Coach Garrett Runion, who in his seventh season is taking the Tigers to their sixth consecutive regional (no regional in 2020 because of pandemic). “It looks like we will be able to do that.”
“As far as the condition of the course, they did get over two and a half inches of rain the last couple days. So it is soft. It is wet. It is nothing like Baton Rouge as far as bent greens and long rye rough and that’s part of the reason we came up an extra day earlier to get a little practice before our practice round. That was unfortunately cut a little short with the rain, but I did that to get used to the weather. We did that in Medina one year. We went up a little bit earlier and we won that tournament, so that was part of my thinking.”
The entire regional field here and their NCAA Scoreboard by Clippd national rankings (automatic conference champion qualifiers also listed):
1 Arkansas (2)
2 LSU (10)
3 Ohio State (14)
4 Kansas (23)
5 Houston (26)
6 SMU (35)
7 UNLV (39), Mountain West Champions
8 Illinois (47)
9 Kent State (52), Mid-American Champions
10 Illinois State (77), Missouri Valley Champions
11 Xavier (79), Big East Champions
12 Oakland (202), Horizon League Champions
The course will play to a par of 72 and some 6,300 yards. The Ohio State Scarlet and Gray golf courses were designed by Dr. Alister Mackenzie at the request of Dr. Lynn St. John (OSU AD) in 1931. Mackenzie is also the designer of Augusta National, Cypress Point Club, Crystal Downs and more. The course features deep, high-faced bunkers, lush Bent Grass fairways and challenging greens with subtle undulations.
“It is soft. It is wet,” said Coach Runion. “But the condition of the course is great. The greens are good. Hopefully it can dry out a little bit and the rain stays away.”
LSU will have the lineup it has used primarily in the spring with SEC Freshman of the Year Rocio Tejedo, All-SEC performer senior Aine Donegan, senior Elsa Svensson, junior Taylor Riley and freshman All-SEC team member Josefin Widal.
Tejedo and Riley are coming off a very strong T2 performance in the SEC Championships at 5-under 205. Tejedo leads the team in stroke average at 71.16 and Donegan is at 72.79. Widal has a win on her season resume at the Tulane Classic.
Tejedo (19), Donegan (50), Svensson (94) and Widal (99) are all ranked inside the top 100 in the NCAA Scoreboard rankings. Taylor has moved from 255 to 116 since the middle of March with her performance.
Besides the 12 teams, there are six individual qualifiers who will also be taking part. The top individual not one of the five advancing teams will also advance to the championships.
Back to that number of five.
“We’re trying to treat it as much as we can like a normal tournament,” said Coach Runion. “But it is a qualifier, and we’re not just trying to get in. We’re trying to win the regional and go back-to-back which has never been done at LSU. That’s something that is a goal of ours. We know Arkansas and Ohio State will be tough to beat here. Ohio State on their home course. Anybody on their home course is going to be tough to beat, especially with these conditions.”
“So we’re going to play the best we can, but we know it’s a top five advance, so eliminating the big numbers and the big mistakes is going to be top priority. I’m glad this is a tough course, so it should separate the field. We don’t need to be perfect; we just need to be disciplined. And if we do that, we should be all right.”
LSU is off in the first tee wave with top seed Arkansas and third seed Ohio State at 8 a.m. ET (7 a.m. Baton Rouge time). Live scoring can be found at scoreboard.clippd.com and the NCAA Columbus Regional tab.
NCAA ROUND 1 REGIONAL TEE TIME WAVES
NCAA SCARLET COURSE – Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio
Times are Eastern Daylight Times
Hole No. 1 – 8 a.m. – Arkansas, LSU, Ohio State
Hole No. 10 – 8 a.m. – Kansas, Houston, SMU
Hole No. 1 – 8:55 a.m. – UNLV, Illinois, Kent State
Hole No. 10 – 8:55 a.m. – Illinois State, Xavier, Oakland
Hole No. 1 – 9:50 a.m. – Individuals – Harvard, Minnesota, Eastern Michigan
Hole No. 10 – 9:50 a.m. – Individuals – Michigan, Youngstown State, Bradley