UK Women’s Golf Rides Momentum into Regular-Season Finale
BROWNS SUMMIT, N.C. – Looking to strike while the iron is hot – and while the stakes are about to be at their highest – the Kentucky women’s golf team will compete in the Bryan National Collegiate this weekend to wrap up the 2017-18 regular-season slate.
Coming off an important match-play victory over No. 16 Kent State last week on their home course, the Wildcats will try to sustain the momentum before the all-important postseason begins later this month.
The tournament will tee off Friday at 8:30 a.m. with a shotgun start from the Bryan Park Champions Golf Course in Browns Summit, North Carolina. Originally slated for a three-day, 54-hole tournament, the schedule has been altered with inclement weather forecasted for the weekend. The teams will play 36 holes Friday with a plan to play the final 18 Saturday. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, the tournament finale will move to Sunday.
Live scoring will be available throughout the weekend at Golfstat.com.
“This spring season has flown by and it’s hard to believe it’s time for our last regular-season event before postseason,” UK head coach Golda Borst said. “We are finishing up at a great track with one of the most competitive fields in the county, and I think this challenge comes at a perfect time in our season. Our team has really come together through this spring and we are starting to see what this group is capable of. We have had a couple of good weeks of preparation for the Bryan; now we just need to control what we can and enjoy this course.”
With two weeks until the Southeastern Conference Championship, UK is hoping to build off its strong play in its last two events – first a season-best third-place finish at the Clover Cup in Mesa, Arizona, before a thrilling 3-2 match-play upset of perennial power Kent State last week at the University Club of Kentucky.
The Wildcats hope to parlay that success into this weekend and then into the postseason. UK begins this week ranked No. 57, which would likely put the Wildcats in NCAA regionals for the seventh time in eight seasons under Borst if postseason started today, but Borst and Co. are hoping to go even further this season and make it to the NCAA Championships for the first time since 1992.
A tournament and course like the Bryan is just the type of preparation to get ready for a run like that. Of the 17 teams in the field, two are ranked in the top 10, six are in the top 25 and 11 are in the top 50. The full field consists of Auburn, Charlotte, Clemson, Colorado State, Furman, Georgetown, UK, Miami (Fla.), Michigan, North Carolina, NC State, Notre Dame, South Carolina, Tennessee, UCF, UNCG (individuals only), Virginia and Wake Forest.
Not only is the field tough, the Champions Course offers a test as stiff as they come. Playing at 6,386 yards this week, a par 72, the course yielded just two under-par scores a year ago.
Opened in 1990 under the design of world-renowned golf course architect Rees Jones, seven holes at the Champions Course border the scenic Lake Townsend. Ranked in 1990 as the runner-up for the best new public course in the country by Golf Digest, the course has since been ranked nationally each year by major golf publications, including Golfweek’s best courses you can play in 2010.
UK will counter the field and course with what’s been its best lineup to date. For the third straight event, Borst will use the veteran lineup of junior Leonie Bettel, sophomore Sarah Shipley, and seniors Ale Walker and Isabelle Johansson. Those five have produced UK’s best stretch of the season.
Bettel is the hottest of the bunch, having clinched the 3-2 victory over Kent State by rolling in a four-foot par putt on the second playoff hole after enduring five straight hours of rainy and windy conditions. In her last tournament, at the Clover Cup, she tied for sixth place, tied for the best tournament finish of her career, with a score of 2-over par.
Shipley tied for ninth at the Clover Cup at 3-over par. She recorded both her 18-hole (68 in the second round) and 54-hole (219) career lows the Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona. She clinched the first point in the match play win last week with a commanding 3-and-2 victory.
Walker dropped her match-play decision but is playing well after nearly six months off due to injury. Upon return at the Clover Cup, Walker tied for 13th with a 5-over-par 221.
Johansson and Rose didn’t finish as high as they usually do at the Clover Cup, tying for 32nd and 37th, respectively, but they’ve posted the best overall bodies of work in the 2017-18 campaign. Johansson, one of the most decorated golfers in school history, has three top-20 tournament finishes and two top-10 tournament showings to her name, while Rose has three top-20 tournament finishes and the co-championship at the Bettie Lou Evans Invitational.
UK last appeared at the Bryan in 2016, when the Wildcats tied for fifth place in a stacked field.
For the latest on the Kentucky women’s golf team, follow the team on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.
