SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State women's golf team returns to the fairways next week when it plays host to the Lamkin Invitational, March 25-27, in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
The seventh annual tournament, which underwent a name change this year from the SDSU March Mayhem, will include a match-play format for the fifth consecutive season on the par-72, 6,318-yard course layout at The Farms Golf Club. Admission is free to the public.
Along with the No. 49 Aztecs, the highly competitive field features eight additional schools ranked among the latest Golfstat top 75, including No. 6 Vanderbilt, No. 26 Pepperdine, No. 32 San José State, No. 41 Texas Tech, No. 47 California, No. 55 Augusta, No. 70 UC Davis and No. 73 Sacramento State, while Central Arkansas, Portland State and UC Irvine round out the list of participating squads.
For the second year in a row, the event will introduce 18 holes of stroke play to determine seeds for match play, beginning with a shotgun start on Monday at 8 a.m. PT. The top eight seeds advance to the main bracket for the first round of match play later in the afternoon, while the No. 9 through No. 12 seeds will battle each another in round-robin matches.
Single matches in the championship, consolation and round-robin brackets will be conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, with the action commencing in a shotgun start at 8:30 a.m. PT for both days. A link to live scoring, courtesy of BirdieFire, will be available throughout the week on GoAztecs.com.
All seven players on SDSU's roster will compete at The Farms next week, featuring the starting five of Gioia Carpinelli (Boppelsen, Switzerland), Sara Kjellker (Hollviken, Sweden), Fernanda Escauriza (Asunción, Paraguay), Kitty Tam (Hong Kong, China) and April Ranches (San Diego, Calif.). In addition, head coach Leslie Spalding's charges will include individual competitors Daniela Anastasi (La Jolla, Calif.) and Tatum Mahon (San Diego, Calif.)
Carpinelli, who climbed to No. 56 in the latest Golfstat Cup standings and finds herself at No. 61 in the Golfweek individual rankings, is coming off a medal-winning performance nearly two weeks ago at the Arizona Wildcat Invitational, where she was the lone participant in the 92-player field to finish with a red figure, shooting a 1-under 215 to earn Mountain West Women's Golfer of the Week honors.
For the season, Carpinelli leads the Aztecs with a 72.62 scoring average and has been the Aztecs' top finisher in five of six team events, posting three top-five placements. Last month, she also tied for third with Escauriza at the Bruin Wave Invitational in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Last season, San Diego State went 1-2 in match play at its home tournament after earning a No. 7 seed during stroke play. The Aztecs fell to Texas in their opening match, 3.5-1.5, before edging Colorado, 3-2, in the consolation bracket. However, the Scarlet and Black experienced a heart-breaker to then-No. 1 UCLA in the fifth-place match despite splitting four individual encounters and halving another, as the Bruins posted a greater margin of victory (9-8) in their wins.
Individually, Carpinelli went 2-1 in her matches, while Kjellker recorded a 1-2 mark after tying for third during the stroke-play phase with a 1-under 71.
A new team will bear the Lamkin Invitational crown this season, with three-time defending champion USC skipping the event. In addition to SDSU, the lone holdovers from last year's tournament are California, which finished eighth in the main bracket, and Pepperdine, which went 2-1 in round-robin play.
Following the Lamkin Invitational, the Aztecs will have one final tune-up before the Mountain West Championship when they head to wine country for the Silverado Showdown, April 7-9, in Napa, Calif.