The ASU women’s golf team recorded their third-straight top-10 finish on Tuesday in the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge, finishing in seventh place shooting 36-over par as a team.
The Sun Devils went into the final round on Tuesday in third place and within striking distance but an inconsistent final round from the team dropped them into seventh place at the end of the day.
Sophomore Monica Vaughn led the team both on Tuesday and in the tournament as she shot 3-over in the final round and 1-over overall. Vaughn finished the tournament tied for fourth place. It is her second career top-10 finish and first top-five finish.
Vaughn ended the fall season at the Pac-12 Preview with a career-best score, shooting for par, and has seemed to be able to keep that momentum going into the spring. Vaughn was the only Sun Devil to finish in the top 10.
Senior Noemi Jimenez started the fall season by shooting 4-under at the ANNIKA Intercollegiate and 3-under at the Stanford Intercollegiate. However, after finishing the season with a 5-over performance at the Pac-12 Preview, the fourth ranked amateur in the world was looking to improve to start the spring season.
However, Jimenez shot her worst tournament since her freshman year at the NCAA East Regional finishing at 14-over-par. She began the tournament strong, shooting 2-over on the first day but rounds of 7-over and 5-over over the final two rounds, including 12 bogeys and only three birdies, hurt her greatly.
ASU placed last in terms of the Pac-12 schools in participation on Tuesday, with USC, Arizona, UCLA and Washington all placing in the top six. The Sun Devils were four strokes behind first-ranked Washington.
The Baylor Bears, ranked outside of the top 25, led for most of the tournament and was able to hold on for the win shooting 11-over as a team. UCLA’s Bronte Law shot 5-under for the individual title and was one of only three players, USC’s Amy Lee being another, to record a score under-par over the three rounds.
The women’s golf team will not be in action again until March 6 when they travel to South Carolina to participate in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate hosted by the South Carolina Gamecocks.
That begins a busy month of March for the team as they are scheduled to play in four events, more than they played in all of the fall season, including the Clover Cup in Mesa.
Reach the reporter at wslane@asu.edu or on Twitter @bill_slane
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