Sept. 24, 2001
Notre Dame, Ind. – The Notre Dame women’s golf team will open its 2001 fall schedule the weekend of Sept. 29-30 as the Irish play host to the second annual Notre Dame Invitational women’s golf tournament at the par-72, 5,955-yard Warren Golf Course. Play begins at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday with a shotgun start. The tournament is free and open to the public.
The Irish, under the direction of first-year head coach Debby King, will look to defend their 2000 title as they won the inaugural Notre Dame Invitational by 30 strokes (935-965) over second-place Princeton. Notre Dame was led by medalist Rebecca Rogers (So., Alpharetta, Ga.) who set a Notre Dame women’s record in the opening round by firing a two-under par 70 on the way to a 225 total and an eight-stroke win Illinois State’s Nicol Foy. The Irish had four of the top nine finishers in the tournament.
This year’s tournament field has grown to 17 teams including: Arkansas-Little Rock, Ball State, Butler, Cincinnati, Cleveland State, Creighton, Evansville, Iowa, Northern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Southwest Missouri State, Texas-Pan American, Texas Southern, Western Michigan, Wichita State and Xavier.
The Irish have not played since the weekend of Sept. 7-8 when junior Terri Taibl (Elm Grove, Wisc.) won the 72-hole Campus Championship by six strokes over Shannon Byrne (So., Arlington Heights, Ill.). The tournament scheduled the following week at Michigan State was cancelled due to the events of Sept. 11th in New York and Washington, D.C.
Joining Taibl and Byrne among the top five Irish golfers will be senior Kristin McMurtrie (Calgary, Alb.), Rogers and sophomore Jeanne Murphy (Alexandria, Va.). They were the top five finishers in the campus championship. McMurtrie is the team’s veteran as she has seen action in 26 tournaments in her career playing 62 rounds of golf with an 83.45 career average.
The Warren Golf Course is located near the northeast corner of the Notre Dame campus and opened in the spring of 2000. The course played host to the 2000 BIG EAST Men’s Golf Championship in late April. Designed by the Austin, Texas-based architectural team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the course is patterned after the classic, walkable Irish and American courses built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Noted for its dramatic bunkering and strategically-designed greens, the Warren Golf Course has been recognized over by both Golf and Golfweek magazines as one of the nation’s “best new golf course” in the past year.