No. 23 Tulane Golfers Open NCAA Championship Play on Friday
May 21, 2015 | Women's Golf
NCAA Championship Tournament Central
BRADENTON, Fla. Tulane's 23rd-ranked golf team will begin its hunt for a national championship when the Green Wave opens play at the 2015 NCAA Championships on Friday, May 22 at the Concession Golf Club (par-72, 6,468 yards). The Championship will take place May 22-27 and is hosted by fellow American Athletic Conference member, South Florida.
Tulane will join golfers from No. 19 UNLV and No. 22 UC Davis for the first two rounds. The groups will open the first round from the first tee on Friday at 11 a.m. (CST) and from the 10th tee for Saturday's second round, beginning at 6:30 a.m. (CST). Sunday's tee times will be determined by team scoring.
Live results from each round will be available at Golfstat.com or on Twitter: @GreenWaveWGolf. Daily recaps, video and photos will be available on the official website of Tulane Athletics: TulaneGreenWave.com.
"I am very proud of our team and the way they bounced back from a poor conference showing to playing three really consistent rounds at regionals and qualifying for the national championships. That's quite an achievement," Tulane head coach Lorne Don said. "The course at Notre Dame for regionals was fairly difficult but I thought we played it well and the Concession course will be a similar challenge. Playing in the national championships was our goals at the beginning of the year so I am very excited for our players to be able to realize one of their ultimate goals of getting back to the national championships."
Tulane will send out a line-up featuring senior Gemma Dryburgh, the junior trio of Silvia Garces, Madison Opfer and Emily Penttila and sophomore Belen Goicoechea.
The line-up is no stranger to NCAA Championship play. The same group finished 15th at last year's national championships while Dryburgh, Garces, Opfer and Penttila were also in the line-up for Tulane's 2013 NCAA Championships appearance and helped post a school-record ninth-place finish.
The Green Wave joins a field of 24 at the 2015 NCAA Championships. Along with Tulane, this year's Championship participants include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Baylor, California, Campbell, defending national champion Duke, LSU, North Carolina State, Northwestern, Purdue, South Carolina, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, UC Davis, UCLA, UNLV, USC, Virginia, Wake Forest and Washington.
Tulane is making its sixth appearance in the national championship round, including its fifth in the last seven years and returns to the NCAA Championships for a school-record third straight season. The Green Wave has also made appearances in 2014 (Tulsa, Okla.), 2013 (Athens, Ga.) and back-to-back trips in 2009 (Owing Mills, Md.) and 2010 (Wilmington, N.C.) and made its initial appearance in the NCAA Championships in 2005 (Sunriver, Ore.).
Tulane posted a fifth-place finish at the South Bend NCAA Regionals to advance to this year's national championship rounds.
The top six teams from the four regionals played May 7-9, plus the top 12 individuals not on an NCAA finals-qualifying team, form the field for Friday's opening round. Those 24 teams and 12 individual competitors will play 54 holes of stroke play.
Following the final of those four rounds, on Monday the top 15 teams plus the top-nine individuals all advance to another day of stroke play on Tuesday. The results of Tuesday's round will determine the individual 72-hole champion. It also will cull the final 15 teams for Wednesday's seeded match-play round that will determine the team champion.
The Golf Channel will provide live coverage of the final three rounds on Monday-Wednesday. Click here for television information.
Players Mentioned
