Tar Heels place 10th at Mason Rudolph Championship

The North Carolina women’s golf team struggled with focus this weekend at the Mason Rudolph Championship despite familiarity with the golf course.

The course in Franklin, Tenn., which hosted the NCAA Championship in May, was familiar to four of the six members of the team who played, and although the prior experience helped North Carolina, it was not enough.

The Tar Heels placed 10th out of a field of 15 at the team’s second tournament of the year.

Junior Casey Grice, who was the low Tar Heel, tied for 13th place overall finished eight-over-par. She said that having played the course before was beneficial to her game.

“It’s definitely a placement course,” Grice said. “So it can only help to play the course as many times as possible.”

However, she said the slight differences in the course were enough to have an affect.

“The course was playing pretty hard,” Grice said. “So the scores were higher than normal.”

Coach Jan Mann agreed with Grice, but said the inexperience of some of the team’s players played a role in the Tar Heels’ performance.

“We’ve got a young team. I was playing a couple of new players; for the ones that had been there before, obviously, they were familiar with it and that was helpful,” Mann said. “But Elizabeth Mallett and Maia Schechter had never played the course before so it was brand new to them.”

Mallett, a freshman from Sutton Coldfield, England, appears to be adjusting well.

Mann said that moving from overseas to play American courses that are set up differently can be a huge adjustment to make in addition to adjusting to collegiate competition, but Mallett has handled those changes fantastically.

But Mann believes that, for rookies and veterans alike, staying focused mentally is an issue the team needs to work on.

“Overall, (the issue) is very much staying tough mentally and staying (with a) routine,” Mann said. “‘One shot at a time,’ which is a very familiar term that’s often thrown around and used quite often, but it is, in fact, what we need to be doing.”

Although it is not a new idea, Grice agrees that it is relevant to the team.

“That’s kind of just an axiom of the game of golf,” Grice said. “Staying focused on just one shot at a time. You can’t worry about something that’s already happened or something that’s going to happen in the future, you just have to focus on the shot at hand.”

While Mann was not pleased with the team’s performance at the tournament, the weekend did not put a damper on her hopes for the season.

“I can’t say that we’ve played up to our standard,” Mann said. “I think that we definitely are a better team than how we played, but it’s a good time of year to get the kinks out … We’ve got to work on some things mentally and I think we can do that.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.