UK Women’s Golf Set for Third Straight Appearance in the Clover Cup
MESA, Ariz. – The Kentucky women’s golf team will take a new-look lineup to a familiar stop out west for this weekend’s appearance at the Clover Cup.
After a competitive week of qualifying, freshman Casey Ott, junior Sarah Shipley, senior Leonie Bettel, and sophomores Sarah Fite and Rikke Svejgård Nielsen earned spots in this week’s appearance in Mesa, Arizona. Junior Josephine Chang will compete as an individual.
Kentucky will be making its third straight appearance at the Clover Cup after finishing in the top five in each of the last two seasons, including a season-best third-place showing last year. But UK will take three Wildcats to Mesa who have never played Longbow Golf Club before in Ott, Fite and Svejgård Nielsen.
“It’s time for us to head back to one of our favorite events of the spring in the Clover Cup,” UK head coach Golda Borst said. “Our team really likes this golf course, and the three players in the lineup who haven’t seen the course will be able to gain a lot of valuable information about it from our veterans.”
Those veterans will be Bettel, Shipley and Chang, all three of whom enjoyed considerable success in the previous stops at the Clover Cup. Last season, Bettel tied for sixth with a score of 2-over par and Shipley tied for ninth at 3-over par to lead UK to a third-place finish. In 2017, Chang placed 16th with a 3-over-par 219, which remains her 54-hole career best.
With past success at the Clover Cup and a strong final round at its last tournament, the Gold Rush Invitational at the end of February, UK will be in search of a top showing at this weekend’s tournament, which will tee off Friday at 11 a.m.
The Wildcats will have their work cut out for them with four teams in the top 50 of the latest Golfstat rankings and two in the top 25, including No. 1 USC. A total of 15 teams are in the field.
“It’s going to be a competitive tournament and we look forward to competing against the best team in the country in USC,” Borst said. “Our focus will continue to be on playing with discipline and commitment and limiting our mistakes while creating opportunities on par 5s. We have had a good break since the tournament in California and I know this group is ready to compete.”
The tournament will feature 18 holes a day, Friday through Sunday. Live scoring will be available throughout the weekend at BirdieFire.com.
UK is coming off a sixth-place showing at the Gold Rush Invitational, which included two top-10 finishes by Ott and Shipley, who are back in the lineup.
Ott has been on a tear over the last month, leading the Wildcats in the spring with a 73.0 stroke average, two top-10 showings, plus individual medalist honors in a nine-hole shootout vs. Louisville in the Battle of the Bluegrass.
The freshman from Conway, Arkansas, is coming off a career-best sixth-place finish and 54-hole career low of 221 at the Gold Rush, which featured two rounds of par or better. As a matter of fact, going back to the Reynolds Lake Oconee Collegiate Championship, which also featured a career-best showing and 54-hole score at the time, four of her last six rounds have been even par or lower.
The last performance by Ott was good enough to earn her Southeastern Conference Women’s Freshman Golfer of the Week on Feb. 27, the third such honor in program history.
Shipley was nearly as impressive a few weeks ago at the Gold Rush. She tied for ninth place with scores of 72 and 71 in the final two rounds in Seal Beach, California. Her 219 at Clover Cup was one off her career best, which was set earlier this season at the Bettie Lou Evans Invitational.
If UK can get Ott and Shipley to duplicate their recent success and pair it with the usually strong play from Bettel, the Wildcats should be in good shape this weekend. Bettel, ranked No. 79 in the country, leads the Wildcats with a 72.3 stroke average, four top-10 finishes and two individual titles. She had finished in the top 20 of every tournament this season until the Gold Rush.
Fite will be making her first appearance in the team lineup this weekend and the second of her career. She tied for fifth earlier this season at the Morehead State Greenbrier Invitational.
Svejgård Nielsen earned the final spot in the lineup and enters the weekend with a 75.0 stroke average and four rounds of par or better. Both are tied for second on the team with Ott. She won the MSU Greenbrier Invitational in her first career event in the fall.
Chang has appeared in every event for the Wildcats this season. When she placed 16th at the Clover Cup two seasons ago, she fired back-to-back rounds of 72 to close out the tournament.
Longbow Golf Club will serve as the course host and will play at 6,184 yards, a par 72. The course opened in 1997 and was redesigned in 2003.
For the latest on the Kentucky women’s golf team, follow the team on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.
