The women’s ACC golf tournament begins this weekend on one of the most historic courses in all of North Carolina, Sedgefield golf course in Greensboro NC.
Sedgefield, a Donald Ross course, is home to the Greater Greensboro Open and has seen some of golf’s greatest players play on it including Gary Player and Arnold Palmer. This is the first year the tournament will be held at Sedgefield and is a three day event starting Friday morning.The tournament includes all ACC teams except for Georgia Tech and Clemson, who do not have women’s golf teams.
“It’s one of my favorite events of the year,” coach Page Marsh said. “It’s a wonderful golf course. It has a great layout and is a very classic style course.”
Playing on such a prestigious golf course has its drawbacks, however. It is very tough course. It has a par of 71 and is also very different from other courses that the team has played on during the season.
“This is going to be one of the tougher ones,” junior Kathleen Strandberg said. “It’s going to be really challenging. The greens are going to be really fast and its going to be different from the ones we have played earlier in the year.”
Throughout the season, the Pack has become very familiar with the other teams in the ACC, playing against them in various tournaments over the course of the season, so a rivalry has developed between the Pack and many of the other ACC teams.
“I think the competiveness comes from the fact that we see a lot of these teams a lot and are friends with a lot of them, so you have the rivalry there,” senior Lauren Doughtie said. “It’s a very fun atmosphere but the competition is so strong, you can’t beat it.”
Going into the tournament, several of the Pack golfers said they believe they have just as good of shot as anyone to win it. With an older team full of upper classmen, including Doughtie, the players said there is no reason to believe they can’t compete.
“I think we have the ability to finish very well this year,” Doughtie said. “We are starting to put things together and we have an older team traveling this year. Overall we have a lot more upperclassmen then we have had in a long time.”
The preparation and practice the Pack has put in leading up to this tournament is different compared to other courses it have played on due to the set up of the course, mainly the on the greens and around them.
“We have worked on different shots that we don’t normally hit because of how the greens are, so we are using a hybrid to chip with instead of a lob wedge,” Strandberg said. “We have really focused on our short game.”
Marsh said she hopes the team can take all the work it has done this year and play well.
“When you come to post season play you really try to work hard on allowing your preparation to show. You play one shot at a time and be patient,” Marsh said. “I try not to think about expectations, but rather just be confident and believe and let the things we have worked on all year come together for us.”
