Sooners Tee Off Spring Season in Tallahassee, Fla.
Women's golf participates in unique team format in Florida State Match-Up Invitational
Feb. 14, 2013
NORMAN, Okla. -- The No.2 Oklahoma women’s golf team heads to Florida to begin its 2013 spring season at the 12-team Florida State Match-Up Tournament Feb. 15-17 (Friday-Sunday). Florida State will host the 54-hole competition at the par-72, 7,172-yard Southwood Golf Club in Tallahassee, Fla.
Joining the Sooners in the 12-team field will be No.14 Texas A&M, No. 15 Notre Dame, No. 21 Georgia, No. 29 Tennessee, Furman, Kansas, Michigan and UNC Greensboro and UNC Wilmington.
"We're excited to be back on the road for our season opener," said OU head coach Veronique Drouin-Luttrell. “This format is definitely unique and think it will be fun to be paired with another team."
The format for the Florida State Match-Up Tournament is the first of its kind in NCAA women's golf. Six teams were initially invited to Tallahassee to play in this weekend’s event, and those six teams were then able to contact a team of their choice to partner up with them for the tournament. Oklahoma is paired with Georgia due to Drouin-Luttrell’s friendship with the Lady Bulldogs program. She served as a Georgia assistant coach and interim head coach prior to coming to Norman.
Other weekend pairings include Florida State/Texas A&M, Notre Dame/Michigan, Tennessee/Texas San Antonio, Furman/Kansas and UNC Greensboro/UNC Wilmington.
The 12 teams will tee off in twosomes for the first two rounds and in threesomes for Sunday’s final round. The twosomes will consist of the partner teams playing together.
The Match-Up portion of the tournament will be determined by taking the best four scores from the partners (which is a total of 10 players) and the worst score to make the Match-Up team total. At the end of the tournament, the teams with the lowest score will win the event. An individual champion will also be crowned.
Leading the Sooners in the No. 1 spot this weekend will be Anne-Catherine Tanguay, who finished in the top-10 in all four of OU’s fall events. The junior is ranked No.14 nationally by Golfweek and leads the team with a 71.83 season stroke average.
Fellow junior Chirapat Jao-Javanil is also nationally ranked at No.25 and will start in the No.2 position. The defending NCAA Champion is coming off of a top-20 finish in the final fall tournament (the Alamo Invitational).
Junior Jade Staggs will see action in her third tournament of the year and will compete in the No.3 position.
Senior Taylor Schmidt, coming off of a tie for third place at the Alamo Invitational, will play in the No. 4 slot while junior Emily Collins will play in the No.5 position. Collins finished in the top-20 in all four of OU’s fall tournaments and is ranked No. 29 nationally.
Friday’s first round will begin at 7:30 a.m. CT. Live scoring will be available at GolfStat.com.
