Texas women’s golf continues its road to the National Championship with matchplay in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.
The Longhorns are already on fire this season, winning the Mason Rudolph Championship in Franklin, Tennessee. They shot 31 under par as a team, which is their third-best 54-hole performance in the team’s history. Sophomores Farah O’Keefe and Lauren Kim were particularly hot, both finishing under-11 and tying for third place on the individual leaderboard.
The round-robin format of the NB3 event will see Texas face New Mexico State, New Mexico and Stanford on Tuesday and Wednesday.
O’Keefe, Kim, Cindy Hsu, Selina Liao and Angela Heo will suit up for the Longhorns in New Mexico. Liao returns to the lineup after being replaced by freshman Alisa Inprasit for the Mason Rudolph Championship.
The Longhorns will face their toughest challenge yet in Stanford. The Cardinals are ranked No. 1 in the latest WGCA poll, receiving 21 of 23 first-place votes. The other two votes went to South Carolina, whom the Longhorns beat in Tennessee. Texas finished fourth in the same poll.
The matchplay format, in which golfers must simply win more holes than their opponent and are awarded points solely for winning, will require the depth of this Texas team to show out. Matchplay will also lead to really interesting matchups for Texas golf fans.
O’Keefe versus Cardinal star player Paula Martin Sampedro will be the marquee matchup of the event. Both are coming off seasons where they took home their conference’s Freshman and Player of the Year awards and both have been their teams’ best performers so far this year. Sampedro is playing especially well, going seven under par to tie San Francisco’s Riana Mission for first place at the Molly Collegiate Invitational in Seaside, California.
Kim will likely face off against Meja Örtengren, who just finished 5th in Seaside. Their matchup would seem to favor Kim, based on their last performances, however, Örtengren is a strong golfer and this match should also be a close one. After that, it is on Hsu, Liao and Heo to beat out a deep Stanford lineup which had six golfers finish in the top-20 of the Molly Invitational.
Other notable golfers include New Mexico’s Maria Garcia, who set a Lobos freshman record by shooting a round of 67, and New Mexico State Junior Emma Bunch, who has earned Conference USA Women’s Golfer of the Week honors twice in the past four months.
Head coach Laura Ianello and the Longhorns will see the Cardinals again in two weeks, when they travel to Palo Alto to play in the Stanford Intercollegiate tournament on Oct. 18th.
