The No. 10 Gators ended their final day at the SEC/PAC-12 Challenge in the top 10, but that wasn’t the finish coach Jan Dowling and her team were aiming for.
Still, she said there were some positives that can be drawn from Florida’s eighth-place finish Sunday at the par-72, 6,447-yard Holston Hills Country Club in Knoxville, Tenn.
“It was just kind of mediocre for us,” Dowling said. “The positive is I don’t think we played nearly to our potential and still had a top-10 finish in a very good field. But the negative is that that’s not what we came here to do. So, from that standpoint it’s disappointing, but there were some really good things that were happening.”
After dominating the leaderboard for all three days, Alabama (+1) held on to win the tournament. UCLA finished in second, trailing by four shots.
Capping off her stellar tournament with another solid round, Mia Piccio went even par, holing two birdies and 14 pars against two bogeys en route to a three-day total score of 217 (+1). The junior finished in an 11-way tie for seventh individually.
“Mia Piccio just played awesome,” Dowling said. “She was looking for her first win, and these are great indicators that she’s capable of it. To finish tied for [seventh] in a field like this is just phenomenal.”
Freshman Camilla Hedberg rebounded from her 9-over second round to shoot a 1-under 71.
But Piccio and Hedberg’s performances Sunday were spoiled by the three other upperclassmen’s inconsistent play. The trio made a combined 14 bogeys and five double bogeys.
Dowling said the Gators will make the right minor adjustments before they head to the University of Texas Golf Club in Austin to partake in the Betsy Rawls Invitational on Oct. 31-Nov. 2.
“We’re not going to be revamping anybody’s golf game here, but we’re working on a couple of little things with everybody,” she said. “We’re excited to get back out there and go out and try to get a win before the fall’s done.”
Men’s golf finishes tied for sixth: Florida finished its first round at the three-day Isleworth Collegiate Invitational, the team’s final tournament of the fall season, in a tie for sixth place with three other schools after posting a 295 (+7).
Texas (-10) leads the 15-team field, while North Florida sits in second at nine shots back.
Juniors Tyler McCumber and Tommy Mou both stumbled at the par-72, 7,544-yard Isleworth Golf and Country Club in Windermere, each going 5-over. McCumber had seven bogeys, six coming on his back nine, while Mou shot back-to-back double bogeys.
After making three double bogeys on his front nine, junior T.J. Vogel (+2) managed to finish his erratic day with six birdies.
While UF’s upperclassmen struggled, its freshmen stepped up Sunday.
J.D. Tomlinson shot a 2-under 70 after firing four birdies against two bogeys. Eric Banks also had a solid opening round, going 2-over.
Tomlinson is tied for fifth individually with four other golfers.
