Published: November 04, 2010, 01:46 PM (CT)
by Kent Lowe, Sr. Associate SID

BATON ROUGE - A unique way to end the fall women's golf season for the No. 1-ranked LSU women's golf team begins on Friday in the inaugural Pac-10/SEC Challenge at the Stanford Golf Course in Palo Alto, Calif.

Almost two years in the planning, the event pitting arguably the top two conferences, top to bottom, in the country, includes seven of the top 10 teams in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin ratings. All 12 Southeastern Conference teams will take part in the event along with nine of the 10 Pac-10 teams (minus Arizona State) for this battle of conference superior.

There is also a tournament within a tournament as the low four scores for each conference will be added to create an aggregate score that will determine which is the "better" conference.

The Stanford Golf Course will play to a par of 71 and at a length of approximately 6,103 yards for the event.

For the Lady Tigers, they will close the season with a somewhat different lineup as Megan McChrystal and Tessa Teachman (illness) will both miss the event. McChrystal is playing in Florida this week in the LPGA Futures Tour qualifying tournament that will give the senior positioning to begin playing on the tour at the end of her collegiate career at the end of next May.

LSU will lineup with freshman Austin Ernst, who is ranked 10th in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings, followed by sophomore Mary Michael Maggio, who enters the event ranked 21st in the country. The rest of the Lady Tiger lineup is seniors Amalie Valle and Lindy LaBauve with junior Jacqueline Hedwall.

LSU at No. 1 is joined in the field by No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Southern Cal, No. 4 UCLA, No. 7 California, No. 8 Georgia and No. 10 Vanderbilt.

Coach Karen Bahnsen of LSU will be looking to see how her team responds after nearly a month away from competitive golf.

"The only bad thing about this event is that it has been a month between tournaments," said Bahnsen. "It's been a very long break between tournaments but we are excited about going to play at Stanford. We haven't forgotten about last year."

Last year on the same course in the NCAA West Regional, LSU failed to qualify for the NCAA D1 Women's Championship as a team by one shot.

"The situation with Megan and Tessa gives us a chance to show the depth of this year's team and gives these players a real opportunity. It's going to be a fun event. We talked to the SEC and all the teams will be wearing matching SEC logo hates with the team name on it. We've been discussing this for some time and next year someone in the SEC will host the Pac-10 teams."

The first tee time on Friday for the three-day, 54-hole event is 9:30 a.m. CDT. Live scoring will be available at LSUsports.net through Golfstat.com.