Women’s Golf

Kelly Sim’s Tuesday could not have started any worse.

Entering the third and final round of the Branch Law/Dick McGuire Invitational on the second hole, Sim needed seven shots to put her ball in the cup. The result was a triple-bogey, moving her from even-par to three-over.

But the freshman was not phased.

“To be honest, I wasn’t flustered at all,” Sim said. “Coach (Emily Fletcher) told us in the team meeting that we are good enough players to make birdies…So I kept that in my mind.”

Behind five birdies over the following 17 holes, Sim finished the day at even and the invitational at one-under, placing her tied for tenth. Senior Stephanie Lau led the Wildcats with a two-under score that was tied for sixth as Northwestern finished the tournament in fourth place.

Kent State won the tournament with an overall score of six-under while Pepperdine’s Hira Naveed finished atop the individual leaderboard.

Lau bogeyed only six of the 54 holes she played over the two-day tournament while notching nine birdies — five of which she accumulated on the opening and closing holes of her three rounds.

“All around, we could have made more putts,” Lau said. “Other than that, we showed some grit today, which is a good thing to see.”

Sim was not the only golfer to start her day with a score above par. Freshman Jane Lu and freshman Kelly Su both bogeyed their first hole while junior Brooke Riley double-bogeyed. Each golfer except Lu had at least two bogeys on their card after their first five holes.

But the team bounced back on the back nine. All six players earned at least one birdie during their final nine holes with Riley and Sim each netting three.

“We really learned something about this group seeing how they really hung in there and kept fighting and really turned it around the last 10 or 12 holes,” Fletcher said.

Par-five holes were a strength for the team over the two-day tournament. The team was the best team in the tournament on those holes. Senior Janet Mao was the individual tournament leader on par-five holes finishing six-under with Lau finishing at five-under on those holes. NU also finished with the most pars of any team in the tournament with 186, seven more than UNLV.

Even with the success the Cats experienced in New Mexico, the team struggled throughout Tuesday when close to the pin.

“We had some mistakes around the green; we had some short-game doubles,” Fletcher said. “We had two or three players have to take unplayable lies. We might go all year and not have this many doubles and triples and unplayable lies.”

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