Florida Gators
Hooters Match Play
W. Golf Closes Fall Season With Win Over Wake Forest at Hooters Match Play
Monday, November 6, 2006 | Women's Golf
The No. 20 University of Florida women's golf team finished out its fall season with a 3-2-0 win over Wake Forest Sunday afternoon in the consolation final of the NGCA-hosted Hooters Collegiate Match Play Championship at the Eagle Creek Golf Club in Orlando, Fla. The win over fifth-seeded Wake Forest pushed the 10th-seeded Lady Gators to a 3-1 record in the four-round tournament, which featured the top-16 finishers from the 2006 NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championships.
With the win, the Lady Gators recorded their second-straight ninth-place finish at the Hooters Match Play Collegiate Championship, with wins over South Carolina, Alabama and Wake Forest. Florida defeated Tulane, 3-2-0, in last year's consolation final.
“I feel a lot better about the way we closed this match play contest than the way we began it (with a loss to Florida State),” said head coach Jill Briles-Hinton. “Several of the ladies got to experience pressure that you can't teach or buy, and that's exactly what we were looking for to help us out in the spring season. This was a very educational experience for the team.”
Sophomore Mallory Blackwelder (Versailles, Ky.) defeated Wake Forest's Jean Chua, 4 and 2, while redshirt sophomore Ornella Jouven (La Ciotat, France) notched a win over Laura Crawford, 3 and 2. Junior Sandra Gal (Leichlingen, Germany) finished her match 1 up over Amanda Goins to seal the Lady Gator victory.
With the team's win lying on Gal's shoulders, she found her three-up lead slowly dissipating. On her seventh hole, she had to take an unplayable lie, but ended up halving the hole. She was one up on the 17th, where Goins knocked it three feet high, and Gal aimed her putt four feet short. With the match even, Gal hit the middle of the green on the par-5 18th hole, chipped it five feet past the hole and made the putt to win the match.
“Ornella (Jouven), Sandra (Gal) and Mallory (Blackwelder) all did excellent jobs of stepping up to the plate, and with all of the pressure on their shoulders, they were able to pull off wins for the second day in a row,” said Briles-Hinton.
With the ninth-place finish at the Hooters Collegiate Match Play Championship, the Orange and Blue concluded its fall season, which featured three top-10 finishes and a top-5 finish at last weekend's Auburn Derby.
The Lady Gators will next return to action in 2007 when they travel to Palos Verdes, Calif., for the three-day Northrop Grunman Inivtational.
Order of Finish
1st – Duke University
2nd - Vanderbilt University
3rd - University of Georgia
4th - Michigan State University
5th – Auburn University
6th - Louisiana State University
7th Tied - University of Arkansas
7th Tied - Florida State University
9th - University of Florida
10th - Wake Forest University
11th Tied - University of Alabama
11th Tied - Purdue University
13th Tied - Southern Methodist University
13th Tied - University of Arizona
13th Tied - University of Nebraska
13th Tied - University of South Carolina
No. 10 Florida def. No. 5 Wake Forest 3-2-0
Sandra Gal, UF def. Amanda Goins, WFU, 1-up
Margaret Simons, WFU def. Tiffany Chudy, UF, 4 and 2
Dolores White, WFU def. Whitney Myers, UF, 3 and 2
Mallory Blackwelder, UF def. Jean Chua, WFU, 4 and 2
Ornella Jouven, UF def. Laura Crawford, WFU, 3 and 2
-UF-
