UK Women’s Golf Starts Season at No. 23 in WGCA Coaches Poll
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Another day, another top-25 preseason ranking for the Kentucky women’s golf team.
A couple of days after landing at No. 24 in the GolfChannel.com preseason poll, the Wildcats garnered another early season honor by starting at No. 23 in the Women’s Golf Coaches Association preseason poll.
Stanford begins the season No. 1 in the WGCA Coaches Poll with 17 first-place votes.
Nine Southeastern Conference teams are ranked in the preseason top 25 with LSU leading the way at No. 4. The league flexed its muscles last season with Ole Miss winning the national championship. The Rebels checked in at No. 6 with two first-place votes in the first WGCA rankings of the season.
The Golfweek preseason poll will be released at a later time.
UK returns all five players who qualified for and played in the 2021 NCAA Championship Finals in Scottsdale, Arizona, Kentucky’s first appearance in the national championship in 29 years.
Headlining the returners is 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Jensen Castle, who is currently competing in North Wales for the United States in the Curtis Cup, a biennial international women’s amateur golf competition between the U.S. and the team of Great Britain and Ireland.
Castle achieved the ultimate amateur honor earlier this month when she squeaked into match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur and then won six matches vs. some of the nation’s best players. Playing with an injured rib, Castle defeated Kennedy Pedigo, the No. 2 overall seed, in the opening of match play; Rachel Heck, the 2021 NCAA individual champion, in the semifinals; and Vivian Hou, the 2020 WGCA Freshman of the Year, in the championship match.
Castle is just the tip of the spear.
Also back is 2021 SEC All-Freshman pick Laney Frye. She led the Wildcats in scoring average last season as a freshman and posted 13 rounds of par or better, the second-best mark in school history.
Utilizing the COVID-19 extra season of eligibility, Rikke Svejgård Nielsen will return with the most experience eon the team. The 2020 SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year has played in 27 events for the Wildcats with four top-10 finishes and 10 top-20 showings.
Junior María Villanueva Aperribay posted the second-best scoring average on the team in her first season at Kentucky last season and recorded four of the team’s best five 18-hole scores, all rounds of 69.
Junior Marissa Wenzler is coming off a strong summer that included winning both the stroke-play and match-play portions of the Women’s Western Amateur.
Senior Casey Ott boasts more top-10 showings than any other Wildcat on the roster with five such finishes. Fifth-year senior Sarah Fite and redshirt junior Ryan Bender provide depth, plus the Wildcats will welcome highly touted freshman Marta López Echevarría.
Kentucky’s 2021-22 schedule was released last month. The Wildcats will play in nine regular-season events before the SEC Championship and postseason play. After navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic, UK will return to a traditional schedule with four tournaments in the fall, four in the spring, a head-to-head matchup with rival Louisville and then the postseason.
The UK season begins Sept. 13-14 at the Wolverine Invitational in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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.
