April 3, 2011
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. --- The Texas A&M women's golf team will compete in its final tune-up before the Big 12 Championships at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Monday and Tuesday at the Half Moon Bay Golf Links.
The Aggies will battle a strong field that includes No. 9 California, Colorado, Colorado State, Fresno State, Long Beach State, Northwestern, Oregon, San Francisco, San Jose State, No. 24 Stanford, Texas Tech, No. 17 UC Davis and UNLV. The Aggies will play 36 holes on Monday and 18 on Tuesday. On Monday, the Aggies will begin teeing off at 10 a.m. (central) and will be paired with Oregon and UC Davis.
"The players will face some adverse conditions with the wind in your face every other hole and a bunch of difficult lies," Aggie head coach Trelle McCombs said as her team played a practice round on the course. "With the Big 12 Championships in a couple of weeks, I'm looking to see who can handle the tough conditions and hit good shots under pressure. Who's going to be able to hit those shots for us? They can all play well with flat lies with no wind, but we need to find out who can make those shots in the wind with a bad lie."
McCombs will use a lineup of senior Sarah Beth Davis and Aly Smith and freshmen Katerina Ruzickova and Natalie Reeves. Sophomore Susy Grunden will play as an individual and will not count toward the Aggies' scoring.
"I think all our tournaments are all tuneups for the Big 12s because you try to learn something from every tournament," McCombs said. "You want to take something to the next tournament that you learned in the last. I think right now is about not making mistakes that we made early in the year. We want to make sure that we have corrected those things and that we're peaking at the right moment."
McCombs liked the challenges that her team was going to face at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate as the Aggies gear up for the championship portion of their season.
"Playing on a links-style course like this gives them another weapon in their arsenal of shots. It's such a different style than what they're used to playing. We will be a better team when we're done here because of all the new challenges they will be seeing here."