Texas Tech University Athletics
Women's Golf Set for 28th Annual Dick McGuire
September 08, 2006 | Women's Golf
Sept. 8, 2006
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LUBBOCK, Texas - The Red Raider women's golf team will get its 2006-07 season in full swing at the Dick McGuire Invitational in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The tournament is set to begin on Monday at the University of New Mexico Championship Course with the first 36 holes. The final round of competition will play out on Tuesday. For live results, you may visit www.golfstat.com during the tournament. After each day's competition, results may be found on the Red Raiders' official website, www.texastech.com.
Last year's Tech squad ended the season with a 12th-place showing at the Big 12 Championship. After two rounds, Tech sat in 11th place, six shots ahead of Kansas. The Red Raiders slipped on the final day of competition to fall behind the Jayhawks after shooting 338 in the third round.
Despite ending the season with their highest score, the team looks to regain composure as the top Raider in stroke average will return. Sophomore Megan Dowdy comes in having the lowest stroke average of the seven returners with a 76.88. Also returning are sophomores Gloriana Soto and Ulrika Van Niekerk, who tied for the fourth-best average on the team, shooting 78.87.
ON THE COURSE
The University of New Mexico's UNM Championship Course will play host to the 28th edition of the Dick McGuire Invitational. The par-73 course will lay out on 6,069 yards.
The course has been home to the Dick McGuire Invitational for each of its 28 editions, which started in 1979. For 34 years, the course has also hosted the William H. Tucker Intercollegiate that the Tech men's squad will be traveling to later this month.
A PAGE IN HISTORY
The Dick McGuire Invitational goes deep into the Red Raider history books. To give you an idea of the familiarity of the tournament, one does not need to look any further than Tech head coach Stacey Totman. Totman has participated in the event as not only the coach of the Raider squad for the past seven seasons, but also as a student-athlete while at Texas Tech.
In last year's Dick McGuire, Tech finished 17th of 18 participating teams. The team turned in rounds of 314-305-309--928, with Valerie Tan finishing in a tie for 41st with a score of 228. Current senior Red Raider Marla Troester tied for 62nd with a 13-over 232. Pepperdine took home the team trophy after carding rounds of 296-290-287--873 to finish 3-under par. Eileen Vargas of Pepperdine hoisted the individual title firing an 8-under 211, with rounds of 69-74-68.
The most success the team has had in a collective effort in recent years was in 2003. The team carded rounds of 313-298-316--927 to finish in a tie for seventh. Then-No. 21 Arizona State was 12 strokes behind the Red Raiders. Individually for Tech, then-senior Stephanie Dukes jumped ten spots on the final day to finish in a tie for 16th. Dukes scored rounds of 75-75-75--225 in her first competition in an entire year.
THE COMPETITION
Seventeen teams will battle it out for the Dick McGuire title in this year's edition. Not only will Tech have to fight against a number of teams to win, but they will have to defeat some of the top teams in the nation in order to do so.
Every team competing was listed in the top 100 on the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index at the end of last season. What is more impressive is that 10 of the 17 are in the top 50. Arizona State comes in as the top competitor from last season ranked third in the nation. Texas A&M (No. 13), Florida (No. 15), UNLV (No. 16) and host New Mexico (No. 25) are all listed in the top 25. Other teams in the top 50 are South Carolina (26), BYU (28), TCU (42), Oregon (45) and Texas (49).
The remaining squads are Hawaii, New Mexico State, NC-Wilmington, San Diego State, San Francisco, Texas Tech and UTEP.
Players Mentioned
