How much can change in a year?
Just ask sophomore Addie Baggarly, who finished the AllState Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship tied for first with Houston’s Leonie Harm on Tuesday.
Baggarly was tied for 32nd in 2018’s rendition of the event with an overall score of 11 over. This year, however, she finished even par to take home the first individual title of her career.
“I’m happy for her to get a win but even more so for her to be consistent, close out rounds, and have a great demeanor for 54 holes,” coach Emily Glaser said in a release, “All things she has been working on.”
The English Turn Golf and Country Club in New Orleans proved to be a difficult course for the field of over 90 golfers.
Baggarly and Harm were the only two players to finish on par. The rest of the field shot over par, including Harm’s teammate Yuka Kajiki, who came in last place with an overall score of 41 over.
Despite Baggarly’s career-best finish, Florida’s women’s golf team tied for fourth place, twelve strokes behind first-place Texas.
The Gators won the tournament last year by nine strokes thanks to the performance of then-sophomore Sierra Brooks, who won the individual title with a total score of 7 under.
Brooks’ play this year was not as good.
The junior entered the final 18 holes with a score of 3 over, but four bogeys and one double-bogey in the last round dropped her to a tie for 22nd place (+9).
Junior Marta Perez placed in the top 25, too.
She finished tied for 17th with a score of 6 over thanks to three birdies in the second round of the event.
Sophomore Elin Esborn and freshman Clara Manzalini finished tied for 34th and tied for 44th, respectively, due to bogey trouble. Esborn shot a triple bogey in all three rounds, while Manzalini shot a double-bogey in every day of the tournament.
As a whole, UF’s showing at the AllState Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Championship was better than the one it displayed two weeks ago at the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge, where it finished in 13th place out of 16 teams. And Glaser was quick to point that out.
“Overall we saw a lot of improvement from our last time out,” Glaser said after his team’s fourth-place finish. “We were a lot more competitive this week and had more moments where we were really sharp, just not able to put three rounds together.”
Follow Bryan Matamoros on Twitter @bmatamoros_ and contact him at bmatamoros@alligator.org.
Sierra Brooks finished tied for 22nd place (+9) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
