As the season winds down for the Northwestern women’s golf team, the players are still searching for one thing: a successful performance.
After a four-month hiatus from competition between October and February, the Wildcats are still trying to put some bite behind their swings. They have finished in the bottom third in each of their three most recent tournaments, including finishing 10th out of 12 teams on March 23-25 at the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational in Austin, Texas.
“Everybody across the board was equally frustrated and disappointed in the way they played,” NU coach Chris Regenberg said. “Nobody really peaked or hit their potential.”
But NU is looking to turn things around and improve on last year’s seventh-place showing at the Big Ten Tournament.
After the Longhorn Invitational, the Cats took advantage of the warm weather and practiced on the difficult golf course.
“We need golf course time to get up to speed, and that is something that we were really lacking up to spring break,” Regenberg said.
With just two more tournaments until the Cats meet the rest of the Big Ten on April 25-27 in Iowa City, Iowa, NU must take the lessons it learned over spring break and put them into action. Conference foes Ohio State, Purdue and Indiana are all ranked in the Top 25 nationally.
This weekend the Cats will have their first chance to redeem themselves at the Purdue Boilermaker Invitational in West Lafayette, Ind., at the same course where the NCAA championships will be held.
“We have an opportunity to step out and regain some pride,” Regenberg said. “The last few tournaments we have played in have been disappointing for us, and we are ready to get back on top of our game.”
California Dreamin’: This year the Cats are without one of their top golfers after junior Hannah Kim left the cold winters of Evanston behind for the sunny skies of UCLA. Kim, whose younger sister, Ina, is a sophomore for the NU golf team, returned to her native California just in time for the start of the 2002-03 season. She left the Cats for personal reasons.
Kim immediately blossomed after her transfer and was the top finisher for the Bruins in the first tournament of the season. She tied for eighth with a 6-over at the Oregon State Invitational on Sept. 16-17, 2002.
Most recently, Kim tied for ninth place at the Arizona State Invitational this weekend, helping the No. 16 Bruins to a third-place finish.
In her last season at NU, Kim led the team with six top-20 tournament finishes and a 12th-place showing at the Big Ten Championships.
Although Kim has seemingly found more success on the West coast, her stroke average is slightly higher than it was during her time at NU. In her two years with the Cats, she averaged 77.57 and 77.65 strokes per 18 holes, respectively. Her current stroke average at UCLA is 77.8.
Kim and the Bruins are looking to end the 2003 season by defending their NCAA West regional title and earning their third-straight trip to the national championships, held May 21-24.
