Women’s golf
It has been an odd start to the season for the University of Arizona women’s golf team. After starting the season with not being able to field a team due to not having enough players back in town, they put those issues behind them and got ready to host the Arizona Wildcat Invitational at Sewailo Golf Course starting Monday, March 8.
It is their second team event after a third place finish at the Talking Stick Invitational about two weeks ago. When at full strength this team is talented and led by senior Yu-Sang Hou. She was one of the players not in Arizona to start the season but was at home in Taiwan for most of the pandemic. Hou has been back in Tucson now for about a month but it did take some time to get back into playing golf in the southern Arizona climate.
“It’s really dry, and I was trying to figure out my yardages at first when I got back, but now after practice every single day I actually got better with it,” Hou said.
Sewailo is a desert style golf course which is something that can give people difficulties. Luckily for Hou, she really enjoys that brand of golf.
“I actually really like to play in the desert because it is pretty wide open and your ball rolls forever,” Hou said.
Head coach Laura Ianello is pumped that she finally has a full squad back at the same time as their home tournament. The Cats won last year’s Arizona Wildcat Invitational and it was also the last event the team played before the season was suspended. Ianello is ecstatic that she has a team ready to compete.
“It was just really nice to have five young women out on the practice field, because before they returned we couldn’t compete as a team,” Ianello said. “Three individuals going to tournaments, we were at that breaking point of not even knowing if we were even going to have a season at all because we didn’t know if we would have enough players return.”
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Luckily, for Ianello and the rest of the team, they did have enough players return and should be a competitive team the rest of the season. The team has a lot of success at Sewailo and should have a good opportunity to win the event.
After the Arizona Wildcat Invitational the team will have a quick turnaround and play in The Clover Cup at LongBow Golf Course in Mesa, Arizona starting Friday, March 12.
Men’s golf:
The University of Arizona men’s golf team finished play at the Cabo Collegiate last Wednesday and it was not their best showing. After going into the tournament riding a two tournament winning streak and a No. 1 ranking they faced some adversity. They would finish in 10th place shooting a team score of +25.889. Head coach Jim Anderson loved the way his guys fought over the course of the three day tournament and despite the bad outcome believes they will take some positives away from it.
“Today was a much better day for our team,” Anderson said to Arizona Athletics. “We challenged the group to find confidence in their game after not feeling comfortable about how the first two rounds were played. It was great to have all five players in it all round. Even though we made a few avoidable mistakes, we did a nice job of posting a very good score in a great field. We will regroup after a little rest to defend our home event, NIT, in just over two weeks.”
The Cats will tee it back up again starting Saturday, March 20 at the N.I.T played at Omni Tucson National Course. It will be another stacked field and offers the team a great opportunity to bounce back. As of March 2, 2021, Arizona is still ranked No. 1 according to golfstat.com.
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