IU hopes to rebound at Big Ten Championships

After its 10th-place finish in the final regular season tournament at the Lady Buckeye Spring Invitational, the IU women’s golf team will travel to the Lake Shore Country Club in Glencoe, Ill., for the Big Ten Championships.

In one of the team’s worst performances of the season, the Hoosiers shot only three rounds under par. Junior Kristtini Cain was the lone top-30 finisher for the team, ending tied for 28th with a 54-hole score of 241.

Freshman standout Lindsay Gahm finished with the best score in the final round for the Hoosiers, shooting a 10-over par 82, landing her in 35th place with a score of 243 (76-85-82).

The Hoosiers will see much of the same field in the Big Ten Championships this week, as eight other Big Ten teams competed at Ohio State last weekend, with just Purdue and Michigan absent. IU already saw the course earlier this season when it played in the Lady Northern Invitational, where the team finished sixth out of the 12-team field with three Hoosiers in the top 15.

Four of IU’s six competing golfers this weekend will be seeing their first Big Ten Championship action, including freshmen Gahm and Sophie Hayashi, sophomore Rosie Davies and junior Cain.

Last year, IU finished fifth in the 2010 Big Ten Championships in Madison, Wis., and sophomore Jacqueline Yanch was the team’s top finisher, tied for 14th as a
freshman.

“Golf is a very challenging sport,” IU coach Clint Wallman said on the team’s website. “The best thing a golfer can do is have a very short memory, and we’re treating last weekend as last weekend. It was the end of our regular season, and we’re now into our championship season — everyone is zero and zero — and it’s a chance for us to start fresh.”