The North Carolina women’s golf team finished 10th among 16 teams at the Northrop Grumman Challenge, which teed off Sunday and ended Tuesday afternoon in Southern California. Here’s what you need to know about the Tar Heels’ first tournament of the spring:
MOVING ON UP: UNC failed to best its season-high sixth-place finish in September’s Mason Rudolph Challenge, but the Tar Heels salvaged a top-10 finish in California after entering Tuesday’s final round in 13th place. Senior standouts Katherine Perry and Jackie Chang authored two steady rounds, while freshman Leslie Cloots carded a one-over-par 72 to help UNC leapfrog three teams.
INDIVIDUALLY SPEAKING: Perry authored UNC’s top individual performance of the tournament, finishing in a tie for 28th at 10 over par. Sophomore Elizabeth Mallett stumbled in the final round and finished in a tie for 38th, while Cloots’s final-round precision netted her a tie for 44th. Southern California’s Annie Park won the event by seven strokes.
THE OUTSIDERS: With only three upperclassmen among its eight golfers, and without 2012-13 anchor Casey Grice, who left school to pursue professional golf, UNC faces a formidable challenge in making deep inroads into tournaments in 2013-14. Mallett grabbed the team’s best individual finish of the season, a tie for 17th at the Mason Rudolph Challenge.
But through five events, the Tar Heels have cracked the top-10 just twice. Through its first five events in 2012-13, UNC won three tournaments and added another top-10 showing.
CLOOTS AND LADDERS: Among its handful of underclassmen hopefuls, Cloots has distinguished herself as an emerging candidate to buoy the reliable Perry and Chang. A native of Antwerp, Belgium, Cloots played extensively on an international stage, representing her country at the 2011 and 2012 European Girls’ Team Championship and the 2013 European Ladies’ Amateur Team Championship.
She appeared in three of UNC’s four tournaments in the fall and finished no higher than a tie for 41st. But coach Jan Mann said Cloots would need time to acclimate herself to North American courses, a swift departure from European layouts. Everything from the grass to the contours of the greens can befuddle an inexperienced golfer.
Mann first saw Cloots play in Europe on a recruiting trip. Convinced that Cloots could help the Tar Heels, Mann persuaded the Belgian to leave Antwerp for Chapel Hill.
“I knew when Leslie came in that she was going to be a very good player for us,” Mann said by phone Tuesday night.
Her final-round 72 in California provided a glimpse of Cloots’s promise.
“I was particularly impressed with not so much her score, but just how she handled herself on the golf course,” Mann said, referring to Cloots’s exacting focus on every shot.
SOAKING UP THE SUN: A cold, unforgiving North Carolina winter has sharply curbed UNC’s practice time in Chapel Hill. The team found refuge at Palos Verdes Golf Club in the form of 70-degree weather and restorative Californian sunshine. The team will return to The Triangle in time for an encroaching snow and ice storm.
WHAT’S NEXT?: UNC doesn’t return to the links until March 7 in Hilton Head, S.C., the site of the Darius Rucker Invitational.
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