Women's Golf Looks Ahead to Kitara Fresno Invite
EUGENE? The No. 29-ranked University of Oregon women’s golf team returns to the links for its first spring tournament this weekend, and will take on a national class field in the Kitahara Fresno State Invitational, Mon.-Tue., Feb. 27-28 at Copper River Country Club in Fresno, Calif.
The two-round tournament will feature 18-hole rounds on Monday and Tuesday on the 6,262-yard, par 72 course. Tee times are set for 9:30 am on Monday and 8 am on Tuesday.
The 19-team field features three top-50 ranked teams besides the Ducks ? No. 25 Long Beach State, No. 41 Denver and No. 43 New Mexico State.
Other teams in the field include Boise State, Cal Poly, UC Davis, UC Irvine, Colorado, Colorado State, Fresno State, Hawai’i, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon State, Sacramento State, San Diego State, San Francisco and San Jose State, and individual players from Fresno State and UCLA.
Results after each round will be posted on the Fresno State University’s http://www.GoBulldogs.com athletic department website.
The host Bulldogs won last year’s inaugural Fresno State Invitational with a 918 (306-305-307) on the Riverbend Golf Club in Madera, Calif., ? 11 strokes better than Long Beach State (second, 929=316-306-307) and Montana (third, 944=315-312-317). Individually, Long Beach State's Kay Hoey shot a final round 71 for a four-stroke win (216=77-68-71), while Fresno placed three golfers among the tournament's top-10 finishers and were led by Laura Luethke (second, 220=73-73-74).
Looking ahead past the Fresno stop, the Duck women may try to schedule another tournament in early March to make up for the University of Arizona’s Wildcat Invitational that they missed this week due to travel complications with various flights between Eugene, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tucson.
In the meantime, UO is also making final preparations for its lone home stop of the spring schedule ? the Duck Invitational at Emerald Valley Golf Course in nearby Creswell, Ore., Mon.-Tue., March 27-28.
In this week’s Golf Week rankings, the No. Ducks stood 29th ? and remained in the national top 30 just as they had all fall. UO was one of eight Pac-10 teams ranked top 30 nationally, and were joined by No. 2 UCLA, No. 5 USC, No. 8 Arizona State, No. 15 California, No. 16 Stanford, No. 20 Arizona and No. 27 Washington, while Washington State (55th) and Oregon State (57th) also stood top-60.
Individually, the Ducks had three players ranked top 200 nationally this week - Duck freshman Cathryn Bristow (98th, 73.91 rating), and juniors Therese Wenslow (102nd, 73.99 rating) and Kim McCready (157th, 74.75 rating).
A link to current national women’s golf GolfWeek / Sagarin team and individual rankings are available at the http://www.golfweek.com/college/around_campus/index.php URL address.
In their last action in the fall in the Las Vegas Founders Women’s Collegiate Showdown, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, Oregon tied for eighth place with an 892. The then-No. 27 Ducks shot a 9-over 297 final round after they posted opening rounds of 292 and 303 on the par 72, 6,207-yard Anthem Country Club course in Henderson, Nevada. In the individual standings, redshirt junior Therese Wenslow carded two rounds of par or better and tied for 21st overall (218=71-75-72), and was followed by senior Erin Andrews (31st, 222=77-73-72), freshman Cathryn Bristow (44th-tie, 226=73-75-78), McCready (55th-tie, 231=75-81-75) and sophomore Victoria Wenslow (63rd-tie, 234=73-80-71).
UO head coach Shannon Rouillard is in her sixth season at the helm and guided Oregon to 11th place in the 2000 NCAA Championships, and top-12 West Regional finishes in 2001 (ninth), ?04 (eighth-tie) and ’05 (10th). As a player, she was a 1995 Pac-10 honorable mention all-conference honoree for UO and in 1993 took seventh and 29th in the Pac-10 and NCAA Championships, respectively. After her collegiate career, she was a 1999 Women's U.S. Open qualifier after she claimed medalist honors in the Lake Merced (Calif.) qualifying tournament.
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