For the first time in more than two years, the MSU women’s golf team played a complete home tournament, but the Spartans couldn’t sweeten the experience with a win.
Though the weather turned rainy and gray Sunday, the Mary Fossum Invitational continued. The tourney ended early two years ago because of showers and was canceled last year because of Sept. 11.
But despite the Spartans’ eagerness to finally play a tourney at Forest Akers West, they couldn’t fully capitalize on the home advantage and finished third out of 13 teams.
“It feels good to play at home,” junior Allison Fouch said. “I’ve played this course so many times I know every nook and cranny of it. I feel very comfortable on every tee.”
The Spartan team carded a 600 after 36 holes of play Saturday, good enough to cling to a seven stroke lead going into Sunday.
Western Michigan’s Erica Bieniek topped the leader board after day one, and Fouch finished second, just one stroke shy of Bieniek’s 146. That was much improved from Fouch’s output last weekend, when she tied for 59th at the NCAA Fall Preview.
“I’m very pleased with how I played, I scraped it around pretty well,” Fouch said. “I put some good numbers together, and I’m happy that after last weekend I jumped right back into shooting some good numbers and played some solid golf.”
On Sunday, temperatures dropped to the 50-degree mark and a light drizzle fell throughout the day. The weather frustrated many teams, including MSU, which shot a 316 to drop to third.
“Nothing was really comfortable today,” freshman Dayna Burleigh said. “Everything seemed choppy. It was just a bad day. Something was really off.”
Fouch was the bright spot on the sunless day. She managed to put together a solid outing, shooting a 74 on the final 18 holes to lock her in a tie for first with Nebraska’s Sarah Sasse at 221.
Sasse won the individual title after a two-hole sudden death match, and Kent State took the overall title. The win was the third straight Fossum title for Sasse.
Despite Fouch’s sudden-death loss, MSU head coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll called her performance the “silver lining in the cloud.”
“This team is a young team. We need players who will come out and be ready to shoot numbers every day,” Slobodnik-Stoll said. “This is only our second tournament of the season, and we need players who are going to step up and play day in and day out.
“It is definitely great to perform on our own course, but by no means do I feel like we performed well. It was a huge letdown, a big disappointment in the scores we shot.”
MSU has a two-week break in its schedule before returning to action in the Give ‘Em Five Invitational. The three-day tournament begins Oct. 7 in Las Cruces, N.M.
