The Irish began their fall break at the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational this past week, and despite posting the lowest round of the tournament, only managed to come in ninth place out of 14 teams with a score of 899, 35-over par. While Notre Dame had lower and lower scores over the three rounds, head coach Susan Holt said the team is still trying figure things out.
“If we could play three solid rounds, I think we can compete with just about anybody,” Holt said. “We shot eight-under the last round. It was the low round of the tournament, we picked up some ground, but we still have yet to put three rounds together. I think for the team as a whole it’s been a bit frustrating … we’ll have one good round and one bad round, so I don’t know. Maybe we need to look into how we schedule, and not do 36-hole events. For whatever reason, we’re just not competing well in those.”
The team did start the final round tied for 12th, but thanks to a team score of eight-under par 280, the Irish managed to move up three spots to ninth. Leading the way was senior Jordan Ferreira, who played the lowest round of her Irish career at four-under par 68, landing her in a tie for 14th place overall by the end of the tournament.
“Jordan is just a real steady player, and she always has been,” Holt said. “She has done a really good job of making big scores on holes. She avoids making doubles and triples, and I think the difference this year is that she has put herself in better positions to make more birdies, and she’s able to shoot lower scores because of it.”
As a team, however, the Irish have struggled with consistency, and Holt said that will be the key as the team travels down to North Carolina this weekend for the Landfall Tradition, hosted by UNC-Wilmington.
“Again, it’s us playing three solid rounds,” she said. “I firmly believe if we do that, we’re as good as anybody in the country. I mean we’ve had an eight-under round, a six-under round, so we can compete. We just have to do it more consistently … The fact that this tournament is 18-18-18 I think is a good thing, and hopefully that’ll play to our advantage. ... I believe six of the 18 teams are ranked in the top 20, so there’s a really good opportunity there for us to get some quality wins, and I think we can do it. It’s just a matter of showing up all three days and getting it done."
The same tournament in 2015 was one of Notre Dame’s best performances, with the Irish placing four of their starting five golfers in the top 50 on the way to a two-over par 866, good enough for second place overall in a stacked field. The team will look to repeat that success this weekend when it tees off Friday in Wilmington. The competition continues through Sunday.
