March 21, 2012
Lauren Stratton was cruising along at the LSU Golf Invitational. Two straight rounds of steady even par golf put the Vanderbilt star in third place, just two shots off the pace.
After Saturday’s round (March 10), Coach Greg Allen said “Stratty” was in contention to win the tournament so you can imagine his consternation when the next day she posted four double-bogeys and a slew of bogeys against no birdies en route to an 86.
Allen discussed the collapse with assistant coach Holly Clark, searching for the root of the problem. Did the pressure get to her? Is there a family problem or maybe an academic issue? What the heck happened?
Stratton, who was the Southeastern Conference’s No. 1 rated player heading into the spring schedule, awoke that Sunday with a stomach issue but she couldn’t diagnose just what it was. She passed on some Tums, thinking they wouldn’t help, but she had never felt quite like this before. A tough competitor, she decided nobody needed to know what she couldn’t explain and on a very light breakfast got on the bus and headed for the golf course.
After posting her sky-high score, Vanderbilt’s own sports information office wrote that “four double-bogeys and no birdies made it a day for the junior to forget.”
The Commodores had opted to take a deluxe sleeper bus on this trip since it was over spring break and there was no special reason for speedy travel so after the round was over, one in which the team slipped from third place to fourth and obviously didn’t use Stratton’s score, they hit the road for Nashville.
“On the bus ride back the pain seemed to move more toward my side,” Stratton recalls and after about two hours the pain was great enough that she told Allen, who ordered the bus driver to find the nearest hospital. Luckily the driver had a GPS system and the team bus pulled up to a Mississippi hospital within 15 minutes.
Coach Clark suspected initially that it was appendicitis but the doctors theorized it might be a kidney stone, although they couldn’t be positive. Stratton and her teammates were back on the road within a few hours; prescription medicine had made her more comfortable and the team arrived on campus in the wee hours of the morning.
Stratton had appointments with Vanderbilt’s excellent training staff and the nearby specialists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center the next day. Later in the week she had other exams to pinpoint the problem and finally the culprit was discovered – a kidney stone as suspected.
The stone was surgically removed Tuesday afternoon and she was back in her room within a few hours, wishing she was able to attend the women’s NCAA basketball game that was being played on campus.
“We had no idea during the course of the round how much pain she was in,” Allen said later. “We would never have played her had we known. I know she’s a tough competitor and would stop playing at nothing. In looking back at how the high score affected her ranking and stroke average, I wish now she would have withdrawn. But if I know Stratty, she’ll work twice as hard after this surgery to get back into contention the next time she steps on the course. “
