HILTON HEAD ISLAND, South Carolina — Vanderbilt women’s sits in ninth place at the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate after shooting a team total 296, 12-over par, in the first round Monday.
Long Cove Club is notorious for being a difficult course, and that showed throughout the field Monday as only two teams—LSU and South Carolina—are below par.
“I thought we showed a lot of toughness today by hanging in there after a slow start,” Vandy head coach Greg Allen said. “That tells me this team is really maturing because we’ve had other rounds start like this where we can’t recover.”
Leading the Commodores was Celina Sattelkau and Virginie Ding, both of whom shot 2-over par 73s on the first 18 holes. Ding led Vandy with three birdies on the day, all on the back nine. They are both currently tied for 23rd individually.
“It was nice to see Ginnie and Celina play well on our back nine, and I’m hoping they can carry that momentum into tomorrow’s round,” Allen said.
Natasha Kiel and Tillie Claggett both carded 4-over par 75 rounds on the day. Tess Davenport finished the first 18 at 5-over par.
They took some time to settle in, but the Commodores came alive on the back nine holes with a combined 2-over finish compared to a 10-over front nine. Vanderbilt finished the first 18 with 64 total pars, second place in team totals and only one behind leader Wake Forest.
“What I saw on our back nine today really fires me up,” Allen said. “Now we certainly have plenty of room for improvement, but it was nice to see us keep this round from getting out of control.”
Vanderbilt tees off at 8:20 a.m. CT Tuesday alongside Northwestern and Baylor. Live scoring for the event can be found HERE and a live broadcast courtesy of GOLF Channel is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. CT.
