PULLMAN, Wash. - Playing the final 18 holes of their home Cougar Cup, the Washington State women's golf team came up with another even-par, 288 to finish the overall tournament at one-under, 863, Tuesday afternoon at Palouse Ridge Golf Course. The Cougars' two-day score was the program's best finish to par in the nine-year history of their tournament and would have set a tournament record if not for Oregon State which not only took home the tournament team title but also set the new mark to beat in Pullman at -20, 844.
"I thought the team did awesome this week," said head coach
Kelli Kamimura. "We stuck to our game plan of controlling our controllables and they really went out there and played tough. They followed their game plan and sometimes at home that attention to detail, you know they can kind of just get lackadaisical with that but they didn't. They fought tough. They kept going until the end and it was a good solid start to the season."
While the team put on a strong showing in its first event of the new season, individually sophomore
Darcy Habgood and senior
Marie Lund-Hansen stood out among their teammates. Playing in her first career Cougar Cup, Habgood became the first Coug since Lund-Hansen at the 2017 Ron Moore Intercollegiate to shoot all three rounds of a tournament under-par. Habgood closed out her tournament with a 71 (-1) to go along with first day scores of 69 (-3) and 71 (-1) to finish at five-under and in a tie for fifth place. The second-year Cougar was arguably one of most dynamic golfers on the course throughout the tournament as she fired off five more birdies on Tuesday morning to bring her two-day total to 14 in 36 holes of play. Entering the season, Habgood had recorded just one round of par or better in 14 total rounds as a freshman while her previous best finish was a tie for 21st last season as a freshman.
As Habgood came up with the day's best round, Lund-Hansen, the Cougars' senior ace, came up with yet another solid performance in what would be her final Cougar Cup. Matching Habgood on the leaderboard, Lund-Hansen finished her tournament at five-under with a 211, three-strokes off her all-time career best performance. The senior was right in the thick of it throughout the day, battling alongside of the tournament's eventual winner, Washington's Karen Miyamoto, before finishing out with an even-par, 72. Lund-Hansen had put herself in the mix on day one with a 70 (-2) and a 69 (-3) while playing through cold and windy weather.
Individually, Miyamoto took the tournament title with a three-round total of 209 (-9) after finishing the final 18 holes at four-under. The Washington golfer just missed tying the tournament's all-time record of 10-under set by Cal State Fullerton's Martina Edbeg in 2016. While Edbeg's tournament record stood her single round record of 66 (-6) fell to BYU's Naomi Soifua who shot a 64 (-8) on the day to shoot her way up the leaderboard and into the top-15 overall.
The Cougars jump back on the course on Monday, Sept. 23 and Tuesday, Sept. 24 when they head up the road to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to take part in Gonzaga's CDA Resort Collegiate Invitational.Â
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