By Hailey Amato
Staff Writer
As the fall season nears a close, the Pepperdine women’s golf team remains one of the top programs in the country. The No. 15-ranked Waves took 12th at the Pepsi Stanford Intercollegiate Tournament last weekend behind sophomore All-American, Carolina Llano’s ninth place finish.
The Waves hope to wrap up the season with a strong finish at the Hooter Collegiate Match Play Championship at the Dye Golf Club in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. Action begins Nov. 2 and, as always, the Pepperdine squad faces the challenge with optimism and confidence.
“I think we’ll do well,” Llano said. “We’ll just practice hard, give it all we have and wait for the results to come.”
Pepperdine had a tournament score of 906 for the three-day invitational contested at the Stanford Golf Course. Top-ranked Duke University grabbed the team title with a score of 19-under par 845 followed by Washington in a close second.
“I don’t think we did as well as we could have done, but it’s just a tournament,” Llano said. “We just didn’t play as well as some of the other teams. They had a better tournament than us.”
Llano was the Waves’ leading scorer over the 54-hole, 6,107-yard course. She carded a 2-under par 214. Her ninth place finish marked her third top 10 finish this year.
“I feel really good about my game,” Llano said. “I’ve been working hard.”
Junior Rachel Kyono finished in tie for 33rd with a 6-over par score of 222. Rookie Eileen Vargas tied for 42nd with an 8-over par total of 224 for the Waves.
The course posed some problems for the Waves over the course of the weekend.
“It was longer than the New Mexico course,” Kyono said. “There was a lot more target golf. You had to hit it on the fairway because the rough was so difficult.”
For being so demanding, Pepperdine, as well as competition, rose to the occasion.
“Stanford was a tough course and still the scores were really good, amazingly good,” Kyono said. “All the top schools are playing extremely good golf at this point.”
The Waves have a two-week hiatus to prepare themselves for their final test of the 2003 line-up.
October 23, 2003