March 20, 2016
SAN DIEGO -- The San Diego State women's golf team continues its spring schedule this week when it plays host to the prestigious SDSU March Mayhem tournament, March 21-23, in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. The fourth annual event will feature a match-play extravaganza for the second year in a row at the par-72, 6,211-yard Farms Golf Club.
Along with the No. 17 Aztecs, the elite field features nine additional schools ranked in the latest Golfstat top 40, including No. 2 USC, No. 6 UCLA, No. 9 Arizona, No. 11 Stanford, No. 15 California, No. 24 Oregon, No. 38 Colorado and No. 40 TCU, while UC Davis, Kansas, Texas State, Memphis, Delaware and UC Irvine round out the list of competing squads.
The tournament gets underway Monday for the first round with tee times starting at 7:30 a.m. PT, before the event splits into championship and consolation brackets. Second-round matches will be contested in the afternoon on Monday, followed by third- and fourth-round clashes on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
SDSU enters the week as the No. 7 seed and will battle TCU in the opening round on Monday with the starting lineup of senior Emma Henrikson (Malmo, Sweden) and junior Sirene Blair (South Jordan, Utah), along with sophomores Haleigh Krause (Eugene, Ore.), Mila Chaves (Asuncion, Paraguay) and Georgia Lacey (Del Mar, Calif.).
Individually, Henrikson leads the Aztecs with a 70.89 stroke average through six tournaments this season to go with four top-five finishes. The native Swede has already posted two victories on the year at the Golfweek Conference Challenge in October and the Westbrook Spring Invitational last month.
The Aztecs placed third in the inaugural installment of the Farms match-play format last season, defeating Long Beach State and UNLV in the opening rounds before falling to eventual Tennessee in round three. Unfazed, SDSU rebounded for a victory in the third-place match over Arizona State on the final day of competition. Henrikson and Blair finished with 2-1-1 records for the tournament, while Chaves went 1-1-2 on the week.
Following the March Mayhem, the Aztecs will have nearly two weeks off before returning to action for the Silverado Showdown, April 3-5, at the Silverado Resort's North Course in Napa, Calif.