Women's Golf Ready for Pac-10 Championships
CORVALLIS — The Oregon State women’s golf team is hoping to qualify for the NCAA Regionals for the second straight year. Whether or not the Beavers make it may come down to a strong finish at next week’s Pacific-10 Conference Championships, which is being hosted by Washington at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Seattle next Monday through Wednesday (April 23-25).
Broadmoor Golf Club is a par-72, 6,196-yard course. Eighteen holes will be played each day. The tournament will use the typical play-five, score-four format.
The Beavers are playing some of their strongest golf of the season going into the Pac-10 Championships. OSU finished in third place in two of its last three outings.
"As we’ve gone along this spring we’ve really progressed well," OSU Coach Risë Lakowske said. "Our players have set the goal of finishing in the top five at the Pac-10 Championships. We’ve just got to keep working hard and manage the golf course well. Not too many Pac-10 players will have experience on this course unless they’re from the Seattle area. Broadmoor is a little hilly and has smaller and faster greens. We’ve been practicing on a number of courses like it the last few weeks."
Five of the Pac-10 teams are ranked in the top 20 nationally by Golfstat. The rankings are: #2 Arizona State, #8 USC, #9 UCLA, #12 Stanford, #16 Arizona, #45 Washington State, #52 California, #59 Oregon, 60 Washington and #66 Oregon State.
The Beavers will take the same five players that they’ve had in the lineup all spring to Seattle: junior (Bellingham, Wash./Bellingham HS), junior (Battle Ground, Wash./Battle Ground HS), junior (Modesto, Calif./Modesto HS), sophomore (Alameda, Calif./Bishop O’Dowd HS) and freshman (Phoenix, Ariz./Desert Vista HS).
Gebhardt has been playing exceptionally well, with three top 10 finishes in the last four tournaments, plus she is on pace to set a school record with a 75.82 stroke average.
"Jessi has been playing great the past few tournaments and has been very steady and consistent with her scoring," Lakowske said. "It’s the best ball-striking I’ve seen out of her in her three years here. More importantly, even when she doesn’t strike it well she still figures out how to deal with it and get a good score."
The Beavers placed eighth at last year’s Pac-10 Championships and went on to take 13th at the NCAA West Regional. OSU’s best finish at the Pac-10 Championships was sixth in 1992-93.
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