Women's golf finishes 2nd to start season

When junior Elizabeth Tong tapped in her last putt, she had completed nine hours and 52 minutes of continuous golf.

“It was the first 36-hole tournament of the year, so that’s always rough,” she said.

After a long day, IU captured second at the IU Kickoff at Purgatory Gold Club in Noblesville, Ind., Sunday.

“I’m really genuinely pleased with how they did,” IU Coach Clint Wallman said. “Any time you’re coming out you just don’t know what to expect in a competition format. And based off the qualifying scores they shot much, much better.”

In IU’s fall event last year, sophomore Maria Mancini averaged 84 in three rounds of action.

On Sunday, Mancini not only did better but was second for the Hoosiers in scoring.

“She kind of struggled last year,” sophomore Marissa DeCola said. “This year she was really practicing really hard for this tournament and she killed it.”

Other teammates felt the same.

“She really improved from last year,” Tong said.

Mancini’s rounds of 73 and 76 helped IU capture second at the Kickoff event, which was won by the Louisville Cardinals.

Each of the five Hoosier women played 36 holes of golf. The total score for IU was 597.
Louisville shot 570 collectively. The rest of the participants were Xavier (604), Cincinnati (605), Indiana State (618), Youngstown State (647) and DePauw (648).

Fatigue might have played a factor in the Hoosiers not coming away victorious.

“Some of us haven’t played a lot this summer, so it’s kind of our first big tournament back,” Tong said.

DeCola said she started off well, then didn’t play as she’d hoped toward the end of the day.

“Towards the end I got pretty tired,” she said. “But that’s expected in your first 36-hole tournament of the year. I’m not really proud of how I played, but my team did pretty well.”

The low score for IU was set by freshmen Ana Sanjuan. The Spain native shot a 71 and 75.

“She really stepped up,” Wallman said. “She’s coming from Spain, she’s been here for two weeks and she posts the low number out of the gate.”

Wallman said he was proud of how his team managed the course and made a lot of intelligent decisions. He said they have a lot of work moving forward.

“I think our scoring clubs need to improve a little bit,” he said. “In the red zone in football, you want to score a touchdown. For us, we have scoring opportunities. And we have to be able to take advantage of those opportunities.”

IU will be back at it this weekend, traveling to East Lansing, Mich., for the Mary Fossum Invitational. The event is hosted by Michigan State and is 54 holes.

Follow reporter Evan Hoopfer on Twitter @EvanHoopfer.