UK Women’s Golf Begins NCAA Regional Play on Monday
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Kentucky women’s golf team begins NCAA postseason play on Monday in the Columbus Regional.
UK, after a strong season and a heartbreaking missed opportunity at a postseason run last year, is in Columbus, Ohio, this week for NCAA Regionals. The 37th-ranked Wildcats, one of 72 teams in the NCAA Regionals field and one of 18 in the Columbus Regional, tee off Monday at 10:50 a.m. from the 10th hole at the Scarlet Course at the Ohio State University Golf Club.
The regional will be a three-day, 54-hole format. The top six teams at the end of stroke-play competition advance to the NCAA Championships.
Kentucky is hoping to be one of those teams and make the program’s sixth all-time national championship appearance.
“It’s great to get back on the road and I’m excited for our team to compete again,” UK head coach Golda Borst said. “This is an experienced team. Our girls have all played in high-level events, so I know they are prepared for this week’s tournament.
“We have been working towards this opportunity for over a year and now it’s time to believe in our preparation and play with confidence. We are ready to go and I think this team will really enjoy the Scarlet Course.”
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, Arizona.
This NCAA Regionals appearance will mark the seventh in the 11-season Borst era and Kentucky’s 18th overall but its first since 2017 (Leonie Bettel qualified as an individual in 2018). UK was a lock for the postseason last season after a breakthrough – and in many ways historic – year, but the 2020 postseason was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The majority of that team returned for this season, and although the group hasn’t experienced quite the same success as the 2019-20 squad – in large part due to a tougher, Southeastern Conference-focused schedule – the Wildcats are hoping for their first NCAA Championships berth since 1992.
Kentucky nearly made the NCAA Championships in 2015 when Borst’s team placed seventh at the South Bend Regional. In UK’s last NCAA Regionals appearance, which was coincidentally also at the Scarlet Course in the Columbus Regional, Kentucky placed 16th. Current fifth-year seniors Josephine Chang and Sarah Shipley competed in that event as freshmen and will be on hand as spectators this week to support their teammates.
Getting to the NCAA Championships won’t be easy. The Columbus Regional boasts seven conference champions, six teams ranked in the top 25 of Golfstat’s rankings and two in the top 10. Unseasonably cool temperatures could also play a factor with lows starting in the upper 30s all three mornings.
Fans can follow along with live scoring all week at Golfstat.com and on the official Kentucky women’s golf social media channels, @KentuckyWGolf. Post-round coverage will be available at UKathletics.com.
With the majority of the team back from the 2019-20 squad that set a number of records, including team stroke average, this Kentucky group is averaging 295.85 strokes per round, which would rank behind only the 2019-20 record. UK has played its best golf down the stretch with impressive displays of potential in each of the last three events.
Against SEC competition and a few other nonconference teams at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic, Kentucky rallied from a 15th-place standing after round one to finish in a season-best third place, behind only a pair of the top teams in the country.
Two weeks later, at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic, UK tied for sixth with another comeback against league foes. And though 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.
Borst is sticking with the same group that has competed in each of the last three tournaments and six of the last seven. Sophomore Jensen Castle is in the top position, followed by freshman Laney Frye, senior Rikke Svejgård Nielsen, and sophomores María Villanueva Aperribay and Marissa Wenzler. This will mark the first NCAA postseason experience for all five Wildcats.
Albeit outside collegiate competition, Castle pulled off the feat of the season thus far when she qualified last week for the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open. Castle beat professionals and talented amateurs to grab one of two spots from a sectional qualifier in Pittsburgh for the game’s premier golf tournament. She will play in the U.S. Women’s Open June 3-6 – what she hopes is after an NCAA Championships berth.
Specific to UK this season, she is averaging 74.0 strokes per round and has contributed to the team score in 26 of 27 rounds. She set the school’s single-season stroke record as a freshman last year, and judging from her recent play, appears to have regained her 2019-20 form.
Frye has led the way this season in stroke average (73.5), top-10 finishes (two), top-20 showings (three) and rounds of par or better (11). She was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team on Thursday for her solid first-year campaign.
Villanueva Aperribay has the potential to go as low as anyone on this UK team. She has carded four of the Wildcats’ five lowest 18-holes scores this season – all 69s – with three of them coming during her last seven rounds.
Svejgård Nielsen has played her best golf down the stretch after a slow start by setting season-low 54-hole scores in each of her last three tournaments, including a 2-over-par 218 at the SEC Championship.
Although Wenzler has been unable to match her freshman season when she recorded the third-best stroke average in single-season history, she played well with Castle two weeks ago at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball, where the UK duo advanced to the national quarterfinals. As a Centerville, Ohio, native, Wenzler’s experience at the OSU Golf Club will come in handy this week. She won the 2018 Ohio High School Athletic Association state championship on the OSU Golf Club’s Gray Course. She has also played the Scarlet Course before.
The Scarlet Course is the tougher of the two tracks and 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. This week it will play at 6,358 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.
