Women’s Golf to Compete at Bryan National Collegiate, Colonel Classic
BROWNS SUMMIT, N.C. and RICHMOND, Ky. – It’s shaping up to be a busy next few days for the Kentucky women’s golf team, which will have all eight Wildcats in action in two different tournaments this weekend.
Senior Leonie Bettel, sophomore Rikke Svejgård Nielsen, freshman Casey Ott, sophomore Sarah Shipley and senior Claire Carlin will be in Browns Summit, North Carolina, this weekend for the annual Bryan National Collegiate, co-hosted by Wake Forest and UNC Greensboro. Sophomores Josephine Chang and Sarah Fite and freshman Ryan Bender will be in Richmond, Kentucky, for the 26th annual Colonel Classic, hosted by Eastern Kentucky.
Both tournaments will be 54 holes of stroke play. The Bryan will take place Friday through Sunday with 18 holes each day. The Colonel Classic will feature 36 holes Friday and the final 18 on Saturday.
Assistant coach Brian May is filling in for head coach Golda Borst, who is expecting her second child, and will be with the team in Browns Summit. Former UK women’s golf star Isabelle Johansson, who set the single-season school record stroke average two seasons ago, will assist in Greensboro as well. Student volunteer assistant coach Zoe Collins will be with the Kentucky trio in Richmond.
“First and foremost, the team and I are excited for Golda and the pending birth of her second child,” May said. “Our thoughts will be with her and her family this week as they welcome the newest addition to the Borst family.
“The girls are looking forward to getting back to competition mode this week and build on some of the momentum we gained in Arizona. We have had a good week of practice at home continuing to focus on the keys that we hit on last week, which were staying in the present and having and unwavering belief in ourselves. We have to continue to trust in ourselves and be tougher mentally after bad swings or bad holes. If we can do those things, and put three and four good scores together on the same day, we will be in a good position at the end of the week.”
The Bryan will tee off at 8:30 a.m. all three days with live scoring at GolfStat.com. The Colonel Classic will begin Friday at 8:30 a.m. with second-round action to immediately follow that afternoon. Live scoring will also be available for the Colonel Classic at GolfStat.com.
The field in Browns Summit, where Kentucky will be competing as a team, is annually one of the deepest in college golf. Of the 16-team field, two are ranked in the top 25 of GolfStat’s rankings with another four in the top 50. Duke, the No. 3 team in the country, will also have several individuals in the field but won’t compete for the team title.
The Colonel Classic will feature 12 teams, most from this region.
“Every girl on this team has had rounds of par or better multiple times this year, and I think we are finally poised to let go of all distractions that we can’t control and compete the way we know how to this week.
“I am also excited that we will have three individuals playing this week in EKU’s spring invitational in Richmond. To have our entire roster competing this week is a blessing for a coach, something that has happened multiple times this year. Although they are in a different event, this gives these girls the chance to put their hard work into action against outside competition.”
UK will try to continue its climb up the rankings in search of an at-large spot in the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time in the nine-season Borst era. With only a couple of tournaments left, Kentucky checks in at No. 58 this week in the rankings, on the border of the at-large cutline from previous seasons.
It will be the Wildcats’ fourth appearance in the last five seasons at the Bryan. Kentucky has had success in the tournament with a sixth-place finish in 2015 and tying for fifth in 2016. UK struggled last season as a team with a 14th-place showing but Bettel tied for sixth on the individual leaderboard, one of her now-nine career top-10 finishes.
Five of those have come this season for Bettel with three individual medalist honors, including one just two weeks ago at the Clover Cup. With three victories on the season, she moved just one win shy of tying Kate Rogerson (1987-88) for the most tournament victories in single-season school history.
Bettel, last week’s Southeastern Conference Co-Women’s Golfer of the Week, is putting together not only one of the best seasons in school history, she’s enjoying one of the top individual seasons nationally. The 52nd-ranked player in the country has already recorded 11 rounds of par or better this season, one shy of the school record, and her 72.2 stroke average would beat Johansson’s single-season school record of 73.4, which was set in 2016-17.
Svejgård Nielsen is back in the lineup after a 20th-place showing at the Clover Cup, her fourth top-20 tournament of the season. That includes Kentucky’s other individual championship in 2018-19, a dominant first-place showing at the MSU Greenbrier Invitational in September.
Ott owns UK’s best stroke average in the spring at 73.9 with a pair of top-10 finishes. Shipley tied for ninth in late February at the Gold Rush Invitational. Carlin is making her fourth appearance of the spring.
In Richmond, Kentucky will try to recreate the type of showings Svejgård Nielsen and Fite posted at the MSU Greenbrier Invitational while the rest of the team was at the Mercedes-Benz Championship that weekend. In addition to Svejgård Nielsen winning the Greenbrier that week, Fite posted a career-best top-five finish.
Chang will be appearing in her eighth event of the season and Bender will make her sixth.
The Champions Course at Bryan Park in Browns Summit will play at 6,305 yards. The University Club at Arlington in the Colonel Classic will offer scoring opportunities at 5,885 yards, a par 72.
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.
