March 10, 2010
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The Fighting Irish women’s golf team is set to tee it up at the LSU Tiger/Wave Classic in New Orleans, La. as its second tournament of the spring season gets underway on Friday, March 12 at the English Turn Country Club. The three-day event will include one round of play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The first and second rounds are scheduled to get underway with split tee starts at 7:50 a.m. (CST); while Sunday’s final round will feature an 8:30 a.m. shotgun start.
The 2010 LSU Tiger/Wave Classic will feature an impressive field of 23 teams that includes four of the nation’s top-10 teams and 11 top-25 squads (according to Golftstat’s March 3 rankings). The full field includes (Golfstat rankings in parentheses): Alabama (7), Arkansas (42), Auburn (3), Central Florida, Charleston (72), Furman (47), Georgia (12), Kentucky (82), Louisville (24), LSU (20), Mississippi (58), Mississippi State (122), North Carolina (35), North Carolina State (62), North Carolina-Wilmington (76), Notre Dame (46), Purdue (5), Tennessee (16), TCU (25), Tulane (28), Vanderbilt (13), Virginia (18) and Wake Forest (10).
“This weekend’s tournament has some teams that have played real well so we need to show up for all three rounds because we will definitely be challenged,” said Irish head coach Susan Holt. “It will be interesting to see how well we perform.”
The Irish lineup will consist of senior co-captains Annie Brophy (Spokane, Wash./Gonzaga Prep) and Kristin Wetzel (Middletown, N.Y./Hilton Head (S.C.) Prep School), juniors Katie Conway (Wading River, N.Y./Shoreham-Wading River) and So-Hyun Park (Seoul, South Korea/Bradenton (Fla.)/Preparatory Academy) as well as sophomore Becca Huffer (Denver, Colo./Littleton). It is an experienced group that has accounted for 137 tournaments started with the Irish, including all six tournaments of the 2009-10 season thus far.
“Our lineup knows the rigors of playing in difficult tournaments against talented fields,” said Holt. “After getting some extra practice rounds in this week, we are looking for more consistency and better results this weekend in New Orleans.”
At the beginning of the University of Notre Dame’s spring break, the Irish took part in an Alumni match on March 8 at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Fla. enabling the team to get in some extra rounds of golf before the LSU Tiger/Wave Classic.
At last season’s LSU Golf Classic, which was played at the LSU Golf Club in Baton Rouge, La. against a field similar to this year’s tournament, the Irish finished 12th with a 21-over par 885 mark. On the individual level, Huffer led the Irish with a one-over par 217 score, which tied for 16th.
In their first event of the spring season, the Irish finished 14th at the 2010 Central District Invitational on Feb. 23 at the River Wilderness Country Club. Huffer led the team in that outing, as she was able to tie for 14th. She finished with a six-over par 222 total for the tournament and closed with back-to-back 73’s to record her sixth consecutive top-15 finish (out of six events) of the 2009-10 campaign. Ranked 65th by Golfstat at the time, Huffer finished ahead of six players ranked ahead of her.
Live hole-by-hole scoring of the 2010 LSU Tiger/Wave Classic will be available through Golfstat. To access the site go to http://www.golfstatresults.com or click on the Live Stats tab on the right-hand side of the Notre Dame women’s golf schedule page on UND.com. Daily recaps will be posted on und.com.
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