With juniors Maria Fassi and Kaylee Benton leading the way,
Arkansas, No. 3 in the latest Golfstat rankings,
won three matches in two days, culminating with a 3-2 victory over No. 10 South
Carolina Sunday at Greystone Golf & Country Club’s Legacy Course, to
capture the program’s first Southeast Conference championship.
The SEC went with a match-play format to determine its
women’s champion for the first time and it predictably resulted in plenty of
drama over two days of matches.
Arkansas finished third behind South Carolina and No. 2
Alabama in the stroke-play portion (there were a couple of earlier posts on that
part of the championship) and that left the Razorbacks with a really tough road
to Sunday’s final. They battled to a 3-2 victory over No. 13 Florida in
Saturday morning’s quarterfinals and then pulled out a 3.5-1.5 win over a
powerful Alabama team in Saturday’s semifinals.
Benton of Buckeye, Ariz. clinched the title by two-putting
from 30 feet on the 18th green of the 6,253-yard, par-72 Legacy
Course layout in suburban Birmingham, Ala. to pull out a 1-up victory over South
Carolina’s Ainhoa Olarra, a senior from Spain who had claimed the SEC
individual crown in a playoff with Fassi Friday.
It capped a 3-0 run through three match-play rounds for
Benton.
Fassi of Mexico, who also won all three of her matches,
contributed a 2 and 1 victory over South Carolina’s Anita Uwadia, a sophomore
from the United Kingdom. The Razorbacks also got a hard-fought 2 and 1 victory
by Dylan Kim, a junior from Plano, Texas over Lois Kaye Go, a sophomore from
the Philippines.
Arkansas’ Cara Gorlei, a junior from South Africa, and Alana
Uriell, a senior from Carlsbad, Calif. suffered tough setbacks. Gorlei went to
the 18th hole before falling, 2-up, to Marion Veysseyre, a junior
from France, and Uriell lost on the 19h hole to Ana Pelaez, a
sophomore from Spain.
That left it up to Benton and she came through against Olarra, who had played 7-under par golf in winning the individual title.
The weekend produced all sorts of fascinating matchups,
probably none more so than the meeting in Saturday's semifinals between Fassi, No. 20
in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, and Alabama’s Kristen Gillman, a
sophomore from Austin, Texas who is No. 13 in the Women’s WAGR.
Fassi pulled out a tough 1-up victory over Gillman, named to
the U.S. team for the 2018 Curtis Cup Match earlier last week.
Uriell also got a key win when she defeated Lauren
Stephenson, a junior from Lexington, S.C. who will join Gillman on the U.S.
Curtis Cup team, 2 and 1. Stephenson is No. 6 in the Women’s WAGR. And Benton,
so solid all weekend, claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Alabama’s veteran leader
Lakareber Abe, a senior from Angleton, Texas.
It was a tough opening-round draw for the Razorbacks as they
had to take out defending SEC champion Florida, 3-2, Saturday morning.
Fassi, shaking off the playoff loss to Olarra a day earlier,
rolled to a 4 and 3 win over Taylor Tomlinson, Florida’s senior leader from
Gainesviille, Fla., and Benton claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Addison Baggerly,
a freshman from Jonesborough, Tenn.
But the key win for Arkansas came from Gorlei, who earned a
2 and 1 victory over a resurgent Sierra Brooks, a sophomore from Orlando, Fla.
who has regained the form this spring that saw her reach the 2015 U.S. Women’s
Amateur final.
Having won the stroke-play qualifying, South Carolina had a
little easier road to the final, but there are no real easy matchups in this
league.
The Gamecocks claimed a 4-1 victory over No. 44 Georgia in
their semifinal match with Olarra getting another tough draw and falling, 3 and
2, to the Bulldogs’ Jillian Hollis, a junior from Rocky River, Ohio. South
Carolina won three matches outright and halved two others in a 4-1 quarterfinal
victory over No. 63 Missouri, which grabbed the final spot in the match-play
bracket with an eighth-place finish in stroke play.
In Saturday morning’s other quarterfinal matchups, Alabama
claimed a 3-2 victory over No. 24 Vanderbilt and Georgia was a 3-2 winner over
No. 20 Auburn.
It will be interesting to see how many SEC teams are chosen
to tee it up in the NCAA Championship when the regional fields are announced
Wednesday. I would not be shocked in the least to see a rematch or two from
this weekend’s SEC Championship when the NCAA Championship reaches its final
eight teams next month at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla.
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