It has been close to a month since the ASU women’s golf team has competed as a team, but this weekend the Sun Devils will be starting a full month with the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate on Friday in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
The team will have three more events this month including two close to home.
The stretch starts off with a stacked field in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, which includes six top-10 teams in the nation. No. 2 South Carolina, No. 3 USC, No. 5 Arkansas, No. 6 Duke, No. 7 LSU and No. 10 Mississippi State pose big challenges for an ASU team that is still trying to hit its stride this year.
The field includes five other teams that are in the top-20 including No. 11 Tennessee, No. 16 Vanderbilt, No. 13 Virginia and No. 12 Wake Forest.
This is the clearly the most difficult field the women’s team has gone up against this season. The nation’s top collegiate women golfer according to Golfweek, Duke’s Leona Maguire, will also be in competition this weekend.
Last time out at the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge, the Sun Devils finished in seventh place after shooting 36-over as a team. Sophomore Monica Vaughn was the only Sun Devil to finish in the top-10 individually with a score of 1-over-par over three rounds.
After her performance last month, Vaughn will be golfing from the No. 1 spot for the first time in her collegiate career. Senior Noemi Jimenez, who finished 14-over at the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge, will be in the No. 2 spot.
Jimenez won the Darius Rucker event in 2013 and tied for third last year, shooting 1-under par.
Senior Emilie Alonso and freshmen Roberta Liti and Sophia Zeeb will fill out the rest of the lineup this weekend with freshman Ashleigh Greenham competing as an individual.
Duke won the event last year after shooting 10-over as a team.
After the tournament in South Carolina, ASU returns home to Arizona for two events. The first of which, the Clover Cup, will be in Mesa starting on March 13.
The team will also be making a trip to Rancho Santa Fe, California, for the SDSU Invitational on March 23. The four events the team has this month is more than it had in all of the fall season.
The first round of the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate tees off at 6:30 a.m. Arizona time, starting three days of action ending on March 8 at the Long Cove Club in Hilton Head.
Reach the reporter at wslane@asu.edu or on Twitter @bill_slane.
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