April 21, 2011

Women's Golf Championship Preview

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The seven Ivy League women's golf teams are set to meet at the Atlantic City Country Club on April 22-24 to vie for the 2011 Ivy League Women's Golf Championship. The teams will be perusing the 15th title in Ivy League women's golf history and the League's automatic berth in the NCAA Championship. The championship begins on Friday, April 22 at 8:00 a.m. and fans can follow all the action through Golfstat's live scoring, which can be accessed by clicking on the link above.

Following one of the most successful regular seasons in recent memory, the Ivy championship is set to be a fierce competition as four of the seven teams enter the event ranked in the nation's top-100 according to Golfstat (April 13, 2011), led by No. 59 Yale. In Golfstat's Ivy League rankings based on head-to-head meetings, Yale ranks first with a 78.95 winning percentage followed by Princeton (72.63) and Penn (68.57).

The Quakers enter the 2011 event as the defending team champions and, were they to successfully defend, it would be the fifth time in League championship history that a team won back-to-back titles. Last season Penn ran away with the team trophy by shooting a 929, a full 22-strokes better than second-place Yale. The Quakers used a consistent attack for three rounds in which they did not shoot higher than 314 en route to the program's first ever Ivy League women's golf title.

In what turned out to be a fall season preview of the 2011 Ivy League Championship event, all seven Ivy League women's golf teams met at the Harvard Invitational in Bolton, Mass., on Oct. 16 and 17. The two-day event saw Yale (+33) finish two strokes ahead of the hosts from Harvard (+35) to take the team title. Harvard shot a 303 to lead the field by three strokes entering the final round of play, but the Bulldogs followed with a 303 of their own in the final round of play to best Harvard by two strokes. Penn carded the best team round of the tournament by firing a 302 in the final round to finish third (323-302--625). Princeton finished fourth (320-308--628). Brown turned in a fifth place showing (331-321--652), edging sixth place Dartmouth (340-314--654) and eighth place Columbia (328-327--655).

Yale's Alyssa Roland won medalist honors in 2010 as she carded a 227 (78-76-73) en route to becoming the Bulldogs' fourth individual Ivy champion. Currently a senior on Yale's roster, if head coach Chawwdee Rompothong taps Roland for her starting five, she would have a shot to become Yale's first repeat medalist, and just the fourth multiple medalist in championship history.

Roland narrowly edged current Penn sophomore Isabel Han for the 2010 title, as Han finished one shot off the pace with a 228 (79-74-75). Han figures to be in the mix once again after a strong sophomore campaign in which she most recently finished sixth at the Roar-ee Invitational in which the Quakers tied for first in the rain-shortened event. Han also set the Penn record lowest round earlier in the season at the Yale Women's Intercollegiate when she fired a 69 and captured medalist honors at the Richmond Spider Invitational (72-77-71--220).

If medalist honors during the regular season are used as an indicator for possible success at the Ivy League Championship, Yale's Seo Hee Moon's performance throughout the season places her amongst the favorites as well. Currently ranked 19th in the nation and fourth amongst freshmen according to Golfstat (April 12, 2011), Moon has opened her college career by winning five of the nine tournaments that Yale has played in, including wins at the Princeton Invitational, the Yale Women's Intercollegiate, the Harvard Invitational, the Sacred Heart Invite and William & Mary's C&F Bank Invitational.

Moon is just one of many freshmen who have made their mark on the Ivy League women's golf circuit this year. In the most recent individual conference rankings, seven of the League's top-10 golfers are freshmen. Princeton freshman Kelly Shon ranks second behind Moon, followed by Harvard freshman Bonnie Hu and Columbia freshman Michelle Piyapattra.

Shon has lead the Tigers to two tournament wins in 2010-11, including finishing first at the Brown Invitational on April 11, led by Shon's second-place showing in the 65-player field. Hu finished seventh at the Brown Invitational to help Harvard to runner-up status. In the fall, Hu finished second at the Harvard Invitational,. Piyapattra enters the event coming off a win at the rain-shortened Roar-EE Invitational. Piyapattra also tied for medalist honors at the Paradise Desert Classic earlier in the Lions' spring season.

Additional freshmen that figure to be in the mix include the Penn duo of Michelle Lee and Rui Li, as well as Yale's Sun Gyoung Park and Sarah Knapp – medalist at the ECAC Championship in Egg Harbor, N.J., in October. But upperclassmen should not be counted out of the individual chase for medalist glory either. For instance, Brown's Megan Tuohy enters the 2011 Championship with the experience of a junior who played in 2009's championship at Atlantic City Country Club. Most recently, Tuohy led the Bears by finishing tied for 21st at the Brown University Invitational. Harvard junior Christine Cho also played at Atlantic City in 2009 and finished tied for seventh. Yale senior Harriet Owens-Bradley, currently in the top-10 individual Ivy rankings along with Cho, figures to be at home on the Atlantic City tees and greens as well having turned in a second-place showing as a sophomore in 2009.