No. 4 UF Women's Golf Begins NCAA East Regional On Thursday
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | Women's Golf
The fourth-ranked University of Florida women's golf team seeks a berth to the NCAA Championships beginning Thursday as the Lady Gators participate at the 2008 NCAA East Regional, May 8-10, at the University of Georgia Golf Course.
No. 2 seed Florida is paired with top seed Duke and third-seeded Georgia in the first round. The Lady Gators are part of the morning session of tee times that go off the first tee at 9 a.m. ET. The remainder of tee times follow in 10-minute intervals. Live scoring is available at www.Gatorzone.com and www.Golfstat.com.
A total of 21 teams and three individuals will take part in the event with the top eight teams and the top two individuals who are not part of those eight teams, advancing to the NCAA Championships, May 20-23, in Albuquerque, N.M. A total of 324 participants have been selected for regional competition across the nation at the three regional sites.
The East Regional features eight teams ranked in the current Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index Top 25 and eight teams in the Golfstat poll. Florida is the second-highest ranked team in the field. Host Georgia is ranked eighth, Auburn is 10th, Wake Forest is 14th and Tennessee is 18th.
“It is an excellent field and we have our work cut out for us as the second seed,” UF head coach Jill Briles-Hinton said. “We just have to be able to take it one shot at a time. Hopefully, our score at the end will be good enough. We feel comfortable in this setting.”
Duke and Florida will be meeting for the fifth time at a tournament this season. In their recent showdown, the Lady Gators overtook the Blue Devils by two shots to win the Bryan National Collegiate with a final round 307 on March 30. Duke has won three straight NCAA Championships.
The par-72, 6,335-yard University of Georgia Golf Course is playing host to the event. The track is a familiar layout to Florida, who in the past has annually played at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic. The Lady Gators finished second out of 18 teams at that tournament last season.
“It is a great course,” Briles-Hinton said. “The greens are soft. We are looking forward to getting the job done and getting onto the next stage.”
Florida is coming off of its eighth overall Southeastern Conference Championship and first since 1995. The Lady Gators won the tournament by 17 shots over second-place Arkansas with a three-day total of 10-over 874. The wire-to-wire win was Florida's fourth of the year, which represented the most wins in a single season since 1994-95.
Freshman Hannah Yun (Bradenton, Fla.) earned runner-up honors with a career-best weekend that saw the 16-year-old go head-to-head with the two-time defending NCAA champion Stacy Lewis of Arkansas. Yun, who ranks 24th in the nation by Golfweek, is making her first NCAA regional appearance.
Yun and fellow freshman Jessica Yadloczky (Casselberry, Fla.) were named First-Team All-SEC selections, and they were both named to the SEC All-Freshman team. Yadloczky is currently tabbed 11th in the nation by Golfweek, and she is the second-highest ranked SEC player. Meanwhile, Briles-Hinton was named SEC Coach of the Year, marking the first time a Florida coach received the honor since Mimi Ryan did so in 1985.
Florida will attempt to claim its first NCAA regional title. The Lady Gators finished 10th at the 2007 NCAA East Regional. This marks the ninth straight year and the 15th time in the past 16 seasons that Florida has reached an NCAA regional.
