Feb. 11, 2011
LEXINGTON, Ky. – After a three-month hiatus from the links, the Kentucky women’s golf team’s spring season is set to tee off Sunday in Sorrento, Fla., at the RedTail Golf Club (par 72, 6,319 yards) for the UCF Challenge.
“We are really excited to kick off the spring season at the UCF Challenge this weekend,” UK head coach Golda Johansson Borst said. “We have been working hard for over a month and are ready and anxious to compete. We have an experienced lineup and I am confident that they will perform well.”
Competing for Kentucky will be junior Ashlee Rose and sophomores Betsie Johnson, Ashleigh Albrecht, Heather Lott and Megan Moir. Freshman Liz Breed will be competing as an individual for the Wildcats. Johnson, Kentucky’s scoring average leader for the fall season, Albrecht and Lott played in all four of the Wildcats’ fall tournaments. They are the only three golfers on the team who competed in all four of the tournaments.
The Wildcats will be competing in the three-day tournament against 16 other teams from around the country. Of the 16 teams Kentucky will be competing against, six are ranked among the top 50 in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings, and nine participated in the 2010 NCAA Regionals.
The UCF Challenge field includes Augusta State, Baylor, Coastal Carolina, East Carolina, Georgia State, Illinois State, Kennesaw State, Memphis, Minnesota, Texas, Tulane, UCF, USF, UT-San Antonio, and Southeastern Conference foes Ole Miss and South Carolina.
“This is a very solid tournament with a strong field that has some of the best teams in the country,” Borst said. “I believe the golf course will play to our strengths and we look forward to playing it.”
The UCF Challenge is just the beginning of a very strong spring tournament schedule for Kentucky that will have the Cats facing one of the nation’s most rigorous lineups. All four of the tournaments Kentucky will be competing in this spring, the UCF Challenge, Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Championship, LSU Golf Classic and Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic, are ranked in Golf Digest’s top-15 spring tournaments. The Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic, Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Championship and LSU Golf Classic are rated as the top three tournaments of the spring by Golf Digest.
“We have a very competitive tournament schedule this spring with three out of our four regular season events being national championship caliber fields,” Borst said. “I am really excited about the challenges we will face in these tournaments. This will bring out the best in our team and it will only make us better and stronger. I wanted a very competitive schedule so that we can compete against the best teams in the country. This will help us improve and help us reach our goal to become one of the top teams in the country.”
This is the fifth year of the UCF Challenge and the fourth at the RedTail Golf Club. The individual champion of the tournament has come from the winning team each year, and three of the past four NCAA champions have played in the UCF Challenge during their regular seasons.
The field will tee off Sunday and Monday morning at 8:30 ET and complete 18 holes. Tuesday’s final round will begin at 8:45 a.m. with a shotgun start.
Check out UKathletics.com for results following each round and for all Kentucky women’s golf news.
