May 17, 2010
Vanderbilt’s women’s golf team has reached the pinnacle of its season, the NCAA Championships, and the quest for a national championship begins with a Tuesday morning tee time at the Country Club of Landfall in Wilmington, N.C. Vanderbilt will play with Virginia and Oklahoma State in the first two rounds of the championship, which will be a four-round tournament with 18 holes played each day.
The Commodores, who will send senior Brooke Goodwin, junior Megan Grehan, sophomore Marina Alex, and freshmen Anna Leigh Keith and Lauren Stratton to compete in Wilmington, will tee off at 8 a.m. off of the number one tee at the Country Club of Landfall. Vanderbilt will tee off at 12:20 p.m. off the number 10 tee on Wednesday.
The Country Club of Landfall will be set up as a par-72, 6,368-yard layout.
Vanderbilt advanced to its first NCAA Championship since 2007 with a fifth-place finish at the NCAA East Regional in Greenville, N.C. The Commodores, who will be participating in their fifth national championship this week, were led by 2010 SEC Player of the Year Marina Alex, who tallied a ninth place finish at the Ironwood Country Club. Vanderbilt held firm at the NCAA East Regional in Greenville with steady play from all five players. The Commodores counted no score higher than 75, and had three players finish in the top 20 for the first time this season. Alex, junior Megan Grehan (T-13th), and senior Brooke Goodwin (T-19th) all ended the tournament in the top 20.
Alex leads the Commodores into the NCAA Championship after a stellar sophomore campaign. Alex, who owns an all-time Commodore best 71.4 stroke average, has finished in the top 10 in all 11 events she has played in this year and ended in the top five in seven of those 11. Unbelievably, her worst finish of the season came at the East Regional, when she finished in a tie for ninth. According to the latest Golfstat Cup individual rankings, Alex is sixth in the rankings, but first in the nation in stroke average at 71.40.
Alex and senior Brooke Goodwin and are the only two players on the Vanderbilt squad that have NCAA Championship experience. Goodwin played as a freshman in the 2007 Championship in Daytona Beach, Fla., and finished in a tie for 50th (80-78-77-71=306), while Alex competed as an individual in last year’s championship and finished in a tie for 37th (79-81-74-69=303). However, Alex’s final two-round total of 143 tied a championship-low.
Vanderbilt head coach Greg Allen may be making his first trip with the Commodores to the NCAA Championship, but he is no stranger to this prestigious event. Allen, who came to Vanderbilt from the University of Arizona in the summer of 2007, competed in the NCAA Championship in six out of his seven years in Tucson, including a runner-up finish in 2002.
The Commodores’ best finish at the NCAA Championship was a fifth-place finish in 2004. Vanderbilt’s best individual finish also came in 2004 when Sarah Jacobs finished in a tie for sixth.
Follow all of the action this week on vucommodores.com with live scoring and updates from Wilmington, N.C.