March 25, 2010

Tournament Notes | Live Scoring

COLUMBIA, S.C. – After a 23-day break from competition, the 27th-ranked South Carolina women’s golf team will hit the links this weekend at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic in Athens, Ga. The 22-team tournament will be contested at the par 72, 6,335-yard University of Georgia Golf Course.

For the third straight event, South Carolina will send out a lineup of seniors Corrine Carr, Taylor Barrett and Benedicte Toumpsin, sophomore Katie Burnett and freshman Amanda Strang. The three upperclassmen have each played in this event twice, in 2007 and 2008. Toumpsin earned a 19th-place showing as a freshman in 2007 event with a three-day total of 225, then tied for 37th a year later. Barrett tied for 56th in 2007 and tied for 77th in 2008, and Carr – while playing for Furman – tied for 45th in 2007 and tied for 56th in 2008. South Carolina did not participate in this tournament last season.

Some of the biggest moments in South Carolina women’s golf history have happened at the UGA Golf Course. In 2002, South Carolina captured the program’s first and only SEC Championship with a school-record three-day total of 861, paced by Kristy McPherson’s 209 (-7), which won her medalist honors for the second straight season.

Six years later, Benedicte Toumpsin was the medalist at the NCAA East Regional, shooting rounds of 68-70-76=214 to win her first collegiate title and propel the Gamecocks into their first NCAA Championship in five years with a sixth-place team finish. The Gamecocks also played in the 1993 NCAA Championship at the UGA Golf Course, finishing 12th – the second-best championship finish in school history.

The biggest field of the season – and one of the strongest – awaits No. 27 South Carolina this week in Athens. A total of 22 teams will participate, with 19 of the 22 ranked in the latest GolfWeek Top 50, including five of the top 10. Auburn leads the way at No. 3, followed by No. 6 Duke, No. 7 Alabama, No. 9 Purdue and No. 10 Florida. Other ranked opponents are Tennessee (11), Michigan State (14), Georgia (15), Virginia (16), Denver (17), Wake Forest (18), Ohio State (21), Tulane (28), Kent State (31), North Carolina (32), Arkansas (35), Furman (44) and Mississippi (50). The Gamecocks have faced each of the other 21 teams at some point during the 2009-10 season.

South Carolina will be paired with Kent State, Virginia and Purdue for Friday’s opening round as the teams will go in foursomes this weekend. The first Carolina tee time is set for 9:55 a.m. on the No. 1 tee, and live scoring will be available through Golfstat.com.