No. 5 UF Women's Golf Closes Regular Season At Bryan Park National Collegiate
Thursday, March 27, 2008 | Women's Golf
The fifth-ranked University of Florida women's golf team seeks to close its regular season on a positive note this weekend at the 11th annual Bryan Park National Collegiate, March 28-30, at the Bryan Park Players Course.
The 54-hole event features 18 holes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tee times get underway with a shotgun start at 10 a.m. ET Friday. The Lady Gators are paired with Furman and TCU and will go off on holes 16, 17 and 18. Live tournament scoring is available at www.Golfstat.com.
“It is important to play well this weekend so we can have confidence going into the SEC (Championship),” UF head coach Jill Briles-Hinton said. “We got beat up in Texas, and the windy conditions brought out our weaknesses. We have been working on our weaknesses and a couple of knockdown shots. We are working on each area that we need to get better at.”
No. 1 Duke headlines the list of eight Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index Top 25 ranked teams playing in the event. Florida is the second-highest ranked team at No. 5 followed by No. 11 Auburn, No. 12 Arkansas, No. 14 Wake Forest, No. 17 Tennessee, No. 19 Michigan State and No. 24 Virginia.
College of Charleston, Florida State, Furman, UNC Greensboro, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Penn State, South Carolina, TCU and UNC Wilmington round out the 18-team field.
“We have another opportunity to go head-to-head with Duke,” Briles-Hinton said. “That is important to this group. They will have to know how to stand up to them.”
The par-72, 6,319-yard Bryan Park Players course is playing host to the event for just the second time since 1998. The tournament is usually played at the Champions Course, but the layout is being renovated to prepare for the 2010 USGA Men's Public Links Championship.
“This is a different golf course and we haven't played this one before,” Briles-Hinton said. “That will be a challenge, tackling a new course and working on our mental goals so we can accomplish our overall goal.”
UF edged Duke for second-place honors at last year's event with a 30-over-par score of 894. Purdue won the team title at 23-over 887. Three players who were in last year's lineup return to the tournament.
The Lady Gators return to the links since finishing second out of 18 teams at the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational on March 19. UF was edged by New Mexico by one stroke for the team title.
Briles-Hinton will go with the rotation of senior Whitney Myers (East Berlin, Pa.), redshirt junior Ornella Jouven (La Ciotat, France), senior Tiffany Chudy (Miramar, Fla.), freshman Hannah Yun (Bradenton, Fla.) and freshman Jessica Yadloczky (Casselberry, Fla.). Redshirt freshman Nicole Schachner (Libertyville, Ill.) is slated to play as an individual.
Myers, who finished tied for ninth at last year's Bryan Park event, is coming off a runner-up finish at the Betsy Rawls. The senior is still tops on the squad in scoring average at 73.04, and she is ranked 24th in the Golfweek/Sagarin Individual Ratings.
Yadloczky jumped into the nation's top 20 and is tabbed as the 17th best player in the nation. The freshman holds four top-10 individual finishes with a scoring average of 73.65.
