SAN DIEGO – San Diego State women's golf head coach Leslie Spalding will participate in the 2019 U.S. Senior Women's Open, scheduled for May 16-19, at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina.
Spalding, who just completed her eighth season in charge of the Aztecs, punched her ticket to the second annual tournament after tying for fourth in her sectional qualifier on April 23 at Tamarisk Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California.
The U.S. Senior Women's Open includes 120 players and is filled with professionals and amateurs with exemptions and sectional qualifying status. The event features 72 holes of stroke play, with the top 50 plus ties comprising the 36-hole cut.
Spalding is slated to tee off with Cindy Figg-Currier and Australian amateur Sue Wooster on hole No. 1 Thursday at 1:13 p.m. ET/10:13 a.m. PT, while second-round action for the same pairing is set to get underway Friday on hole No. 10 at 8:03 a.m. ET/5:03 a.m. PT.
Fox Sports 1 will provide coverage of the third and fourth rounds Saturday and Sunday from noon-2 p.m. PT.
The U.S. Senior Women's Open is the newest USGA championship and is open to women whose 50th birthday falls on or before the first day of competition. Players must also maintain a handicap of 7.4 or better.
England's Laura Davies captured the inaugural U.S. Senior Women's Open last year at Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Illinois, where she carded a 16-under-par 276, topping runner-up Juli Inkster by 10 strokes.
A 10-year veteran of the LPGA Tour, Spalding arrived at San Diego State after serving as head coach at Montana State for four seasons from 2007-11. Under her direction, the Aztecs have recorded 37 top-five placements, 10 event titles and seven team regional appearances, while her players have earned 21 all-Mountain West honors. In addition, SDSU has won its first two conference championships (2015, 2019) during her tenure and posted the six lowest single-season team scoring averages school history.
Not to be outdone, Spalding's players have excelled in the classroom, garnering 24 all-academic accolades and 13 scholar-athlete certificates from the Mountain West to go with nine WGCA Scholar All-America recipients.
Spalding played on the LPGA Tour from 1996-2005, competing in 215 events and earning more than $600,000 in prize money during her career. She recorded seven top-10 finishes, including a career-best third-place performance at the 2001 ShopRite LPGA Classic, where she carded a career-low 64 in the final round. The Billings, Mont., native also tallied back-to-back top-10 performances in 2002 at the LPGA Corning Classic and the Kellogg-Keebler Classic, following a pair of sixth-place efforts at the 2000 LPGA Corning Classic and the 1998 Weetabix Women's British Open.
The 2019 U.S. Senior Women's Open will be the 31st USGA championship contested in North Carolina and the state's first USGA Open championship since the 2014 U.S. Women's Open, won by Michelle Wie, at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club. Just one week earlier, Martin Kaymer won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, as the resort was the first to hold the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open in consecutive weeks.
Spalding to Compete in U.S. Senior Women's Open
