Wildcats in NCAA Championships Mix Heading into Regional Finale
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Kentucky women’s golf team will be playing for a spot in the NCAA Championships on Wednesday in the finale of the NCAA Columbus Regional.
With a second-round score of 7-over par, the Wildcats put themselves in position to move on the national championships in Scottsdale, Arizona, if they can complete the job in Wednesday’s final round. UK, at 17-over par overall, currently has hold of the all-important sixth-place spot by two strokes over 11th-ranked Virginia.
Kentucky will be seeking its sixth team appearance in the NCAA Championships and the first since 1992.
“This team is ready for the moment,” UK head coach Golda Borst said.
The Wildcats have given themselves a chance with a strong effort in chilly and windy conditions on Tuesday. The day started in the low 40s, and by the time the temperature warmed up to the mid-50s, the wind picked up with it. There was a constant 15 mile-per-hour breeze over the second half of the round with 25-mph wind gusts.
That made an already difficult track at the Ohio State University Golf Club Scarlet Course (par 72, 6,358 yards) in Columbus, Ohio, play even tougher. UK hung tough and posted the second-best round of the day to move up the leaderboard as so many other teams slid back.
Kentucky, which has posted some of its best performances this season in the second round, was also one of just three teams – leader and 18th-ranked Georgia being one of the other two – to improve upon its first-day score.
“We are a grinding team, and when conditions get tough, we get tougher,” Borst said. “We stay in it and we just go to the next shot. It’s something that we’ve talked a lot about with them. They did a great job of that today. They got frustrated but they stayed in the moment. They hit some good shots, they hit some bad shots and they just went to the next one.”
On a day in which Kentucky beat the 18-team field’s average of 18-over par by 11 strokes, Borst said it was just a matter of making putts after continually putting themselves in the right scoring positions.
“Yesterday the putts didn’t fall and today we talked about being emotionally resilient and truly believing that the next putt is going to go in,” Borst said. “We’re going to create opportunities and I know that the putts will fall when they’re supposed to. I just implore them to believe the same thing. You have to believe the putts are going to drop, because if you step up and you don’t believe it, there’s not a chance. A lot of them did better with that today.”
Wednesday is shaping up to a wild final round with the postseason fates hanging in the balance for so many teams, including Kentucky. No. 18 Georgia (1-over), No. 26 Michigan (8-over) and No. 2 Duke (9-over par) appear to be safe in the top three spots, but after that it is wide open in the middle.
No. 15 Kent State is currently in fourth place at 13-over par and No. 7 Arizona State is at 16-over par. And although the Wildcats have their sights set on moving even higher on Wednesday, three teams are just behind Kentucky and within five shots of UK’s 17-over-par score.
What should be an entertaining round will begin at 9 a.m. with UK slated to start at 10 a.m. on No. 1. Temperatures are supposed to warm up just a tad, but it will remain unseasonably cool with highs in the lower 60s and the wind is expected to remain a factor.
Live scoring will continue to be available at Golfstat.com with updates on the official Kentucky women’s golf social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), @KentuckyWGolf.
The NCAA Women’s Golf Championship is made up of four regionals that consist of 18 teams and six individuals at each site. The four regional sites are preliminary rounds of the NCAA Championships. The low six teams and the low three individuals not on those teams (for a total of 24 teams and 12 individuals) advance to the national event, to be held May 21-26 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale.
UK has come close to advancing to NCAA Championships but has never made it under Borst. The 2015 team finished in seventh place, one off the cut line, in the 2015 South Bend Regional. Leonie Bettel qualified as an individual in 2018.
However Wednesday shakes out, sophomore María Villanueva Aperribay– currently tied for fifth – is in good position to lock up one of the top three individual spots on a non-qualifying team if Kentucky does not move on. The Wildcats hope to head west together thanks in large part to Villanueva Aperribay’s 1-under-par 71 on Tuesday, her sixth round of par or better this season and her fourth in the last five opportunities.
Villanueva Aperribay is just five shots off the individual leader, Janny Bae of Georgia, at even par overall. Her Tuesday round featured five birdies, nine pars and four bogeys. She was good early in the round with three birdies in a five-hole stretch on her first nine, but her most impressive hole of the day came late as the wind really kicked up.
Coming off a bogey on the par-4 seventh hole, Villanueva Aperribay cut through a 20-mph headwind over water and a bunker on the 150-yard, par-3 eighth hole and put her tee shot within 15 feet. She sunk the putt and parred the final hole of the day to turn in an under-par round.
Rikke Svejgård Nielsen was nearly just as good. The senior recorded an even-par 72 on Tuesday and was among the biggest climbers in the second round. Moving up 27 spots from the start of the day, she is tied for 13th at 3-over par overall.
Laney Frye, a 2021 Southeastern Conference All-Freshman Team selection, fired a 3-over-par round for the second day in a row and is tied for 31st at 6-over par. Entering the week as Kentucky’s 2020-21 leader in stroke average, UK is hoping to add to Frye’s team-leading 11 rounds of par better for the final push to Scottsdale.
As if there aren’t enough reasons for optimism heading into Wednesday already, consider this: two of Kentucky’s top two players who posted the best single-season scoring average in school history (Jensen Castle) and the third-best average (Marissa Wenzler) have both struggled a bit in Columbus.
Wenzler is currently tied for 40th at 8-over par overall after a 77 on Tuesday, and Castle, who just last week qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open – the premier golf tournament in the world – is tied for 59th at 11-over par after a second-round 80. Castle has finished outside the top 35 only one other time in her college career and her score Tuesday was only the second in the 80s. In other words, UK can reasonably hope for improvements from the two sophomores in the final round.
In any case, Borst said the team will not change its approach in the final round despite the stakes at hand.
“We are prepared,” Borst said. “We have been in experiences like this. Yes, it happens to be an NCAA Regional, but we will treat this much like any other round we play. This team is ready for the moment and we all know the mindset that the team needs to be in and individually be in to perform well, so we will reiterate that message.”
This NCAA Regionals appearance marks the seventh in the 11-season Borst era and Kentucky’s 18th overall. UK was a lock for the postseason last year after a breakthrough season, but the 2020 postseason was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. UK’s last NCAA Regionals appearance was in 2017, also at the NCAA Columbus Regional.
Kentucky’s performance thus far should not be surprising as the Wildcats were playing their best golf of the season entering the regional. UK finished third at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic in March and sixth at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic in April – both which featured strong come-from-behind final rounds. Although the Wildcats failed to qualify for match play at the SEC Championship in mid-April, Kentucky turned in a 1-over-par 865, one of the best 54-hole scores in school history and UK’s best SEC Championship score – by 20 strokes – in the 40 seasons of the event.
The Scarlet Course at the OSU Golf Club is arguably the toughest layout of the four regionals. Renovated by Jack Nicklaus in 2006 and the host of major tournaments on an almost annual basis, the course was lengthened and the bunkers were redesigned to add to an already stiff test. Wet conditions on Sunday only stretched the course even more.
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.
