The Florida women’s golf team will complete its fall season by traveling to Palo Alto, Calif., for the inaugural SEC/Pac-10 Women’s Golf Challenge at the par-71, 6,103-yard Stanford Golf Course. The Gators are part of a 21-team field that features 12 SEC schools and nine Pac-10 schools. The three-day tournament gets underway Friday at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Florida’s rotation will feature four of the top 100 players in the country according to the Oct. 28 Golfweek/Sagarin rankings. No. 99 junior Marika Lendl (Goshen, Conn.), who will be competing in her second tournament of the season, is at the top of the lineup for the Orange and Blue. She will be followed by No. 91 junior Evan Jensen (Belleair, Fla.) who leads the team in scoring average (72.8) and birdies with 34, No. 73 junior Andrea Watts (Bradenton, Fla.)—the Gators’ highest-ranked player individually who has also recorded one top-10 finish as well as a top-25 finish—sophomore Isabelle Lendl (Goshen, Conn.), who is looking for her second top-25 finish, and No. 83 sophomore Mia Piccio (Bacolod City, Philippines), who recently represented the Philippines in the 2010 World Team Amateur Championships and helped lead them to a best-ever eighth-place finish while and completing the prestigious four-day event in a tie for 48th on the individual leaderboard.
The loaded SEC/Pac-10 Challenge field includes 14 of the top 25 schools in the nation according to the Oct. 27 Golf World/NGCA Coaches’ Poll. Top-ranked Alabama, No. 2 LSU, No. 10 Georgia, No. 11 Vanderbilt, No. 16 Auburn, No. 17 Tennessee, No. 20 Arkansas, No. 21 South Carolina, No. 25 Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and Mississippi State will represent the SEC while No. 3 USC, No. 4 UCLA, No. 7 California, No. 9 Arizona, No. 24 Oregon, Oregon State, host Stanford, Washington and Washington State will represent the Pac-10.
Piccio will be the first Gator to tee off at 12:24 p.m. ET followed by Isabelle Lendl at 12:33, Watts at 12:42, Jensen at 12:51 and Marika Lendl at 1:00.
