Golf Teams Set For BIG EAST Championships
April 17, 2009 | Men's Golf, Women's Golf
TAMPA- The University of South Florida golf teams are set to compete at the BIG EAST Championships running Sunday April 19 until Tuesday April 21.
The Bulls are hosting the tournament at the Lake Jovita Golf and Country Club in Dade City, Fla., April 19-21.
The men's tournament will be held at the par 72, 7,031-yard South Course, while the women's championship will take place at the par 72, 5,968/5,988 yard North Course.
Sunday's opening round action will begin at 8 a.m. with tee times off of hole Nos. 1 and 10 every 10 minutes. Monday and Tuesday's rounds will begin in that format at 8 a.m. each day.
Competing for USF women's team will be Gennifer Mendez, Rachel Edwards, Ana Lopez, Jessica Schnebly and Emily Van Etten. For the men it will be Robby Carl, Luke Leibel, Raj Nahal, Chris Tallman and Rick Kittelstad.
The USF women's squad earned the No. 2 seed in the tournament after picking up three top-10 performances during spring season. The men's team will enter the championships as the ninth seed coming off their top performance of the season last weekend.
On the women's side, Louisville will be the top seed and last year's champion Notre Dame sits at No. 2. USF is No. 3, followed by Georgetown, Cincinnati, St. John's and Rutgers.
St. John's was selected as the No. 1 seed in the men's field, followed by DePaul, Louisville, Cincinnati, Georgetown, Marquette, Seton Hall, Notre Dame, USF at No. 9, Connecticut, Villanova and Rutgers.
Last year's champions were Marquette from the men's side and Notre Dame from the women's. Marquette captured the championship with a 10-over 874 for the tournament, beating out the Louisville's 12-over 876. Notre Dame posted a tournament total total of 899 (+35) to give them a nine-stroke victory over second place Louisville.
In 2008, Notre Dame's women's team had four of the top five individual performers including the champion Annie Brophy who returns in 2009 to try and defend her title. Marquette senior Ted Gray captured the men's individual championship to go along with Marquette's team accomplishment.
The Bulls' women's team enters the tournament ranked No. 76 in the country according to the Golfstat.com rankings. USF has the 37th ranked short game in the entire country entering the BIG EAST Championships and is led by senior Gennifer Mendez who sits in 29th out of 558 players in total short game.
On the men's side, the Bulls are ranked 10th in the country in fairways hit. The team hits more than 70 percent of their fairways and junior Raj Nahal has a fairways hit percentage of .801, good for 14th in the country.
Live scoring can be tracked at Golfstat.com with daily updates and coverage being posted at GoUSFBulls.com at the conclusion of each round.
