ATHENS, Ga. — The Georgia Bulldogs will open play in the 2024 Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championships at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Fla., on Friday morning.
Georgia will be paired with Mississippi State and Kentucky for Friday’s opening round, teeing off in 10-minute intervals from hole No. 10 between 9:10-9:50 a.m. ET. Live scoring will be available throughout the tournament at www.golfstat.com.
The Bulldogs enter postseason play at No. 23 in the NCAA’s Spikemark national rankings. Georgia is one of nine SEC teams currently ranked in the top 25 led by No. 2 South Carolina and followed by No. 5 LSU, No. 8 Arkansas, No. 10 Auburn, No. 13 Ole Miss, No. 15 Florida, No. 18 Texas A&M and No. 20 Vanderbilt. The league also features nine of the top-25 golfers in the individual national rankings, including Georgia’s Caterina Don at No. 21.
“I think it’s harder to win an SEC Championship than an NCAA Championship, because all your best teams are there,” head coach Josh Brewer said. “You don’t have to qualify to make it. That’s why you come to this conference. It’s hard to win, but if you can get one it makes it very special.”
“Like they say ‘It just means more,’” Don said. “Every team goes there and feels like they have a shot at it, and they want to win it. It’s great to win, and it’s a great start to the postseason. Postseason is really hard, and playing in the SEC really helps you succeed later in the year.”
The championships will feature three rounds of stroke play before the field is cut to eight teams for a bracketed, match-play competition to determine the SEC Champion. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be on Monday, and the championship will be televised live on the SEC Network on Tuesday.
“I think we just have to go out there and play,” Don said. “We can’t look at where we sit on the leaderboard after one or two days because it’s the SEC, and it’s hard. A lot of teams can play well. You can be the team who is out of advancing and play well the last round and get in. You’re not comfortable, even if you’re well inside of the cut. So I think you just have to go out there and play golf.”
Four of the six golfers traveling for Georgia will be making their first trip to the SECs.
Don and LoraLie Cowart are the only Bulldogs with experience playing in the SEC Championships. Rounding out the traveling squad are graduate transfers Napat “Jenny” Lertsadwattana and Bernice Olivarez Ilas and freshmen Savannah De Bock and Natachanok “Drive” Tunwannarux.
“They’re kind of showing a quiet confidence, which is fun for me,” Brewer said. “The seeding is what it is, but we will play like we’re the best team there. That’s the part that’s been fun, watching them prepare for about a week now and get excited to start.”
Another new aspect of this year’s SEC is the venue itself. After playing the last 10 tournaments at Greystone Golf and Country Club in Birmingham, this year’s SECs will be contested at Pelican Golf Club. Pelican also hosts The ANNIKA, an LPGA event.
“I’m really excited to get going,” Don said. “It’s a new course, so no one has played it before. It’s just about who is playing better golf, and I’m excited about that.”
Playing the new layout for the first time also will make Thursday’s practice round much more significant.
“It’s a lot of note-taking,” Brewer said. “We’re not going to learn everything, but as the tournament goes on we’ve got to talk a lot as a team and figure out how to play it. It’s been a strength of ours in the past four to five years to attack golf courses, but this one we’ll have to figure it out on the fly, but we’ll do that, we’re pretty good at it.”
“I think you definitely have to put a lot more attention on getting great lines off the tees and seeing where you can miss and where you can’t,” Don said. “It takes a lot more effort during the practice round and takes a little bit longer to get used to the greens and chipping, but it’s pretty doable.”
Recapping The Season
Georgia has enjoyed a solid and steady campaign during 2023-24, with strong team and individual performances.
The Bulldogs have notched top-5 team finishes in four of six spring events, with a trio of third-place efforts at the Collegiate Invitational at Guadalajara Country Club, the FSU Match Up and the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic.
Georgia has shot par-or-better as a team at four tournaments this season, and the Bulldogs have posted par-or-better team tallies in 12 of 30 rounds.
Individually, the Bulldogs have compiled 12 top-10 and 27 top-20 finishes. Fifth-year senior Caterina Don leads the way with seven top-10s and 10 top-20s. Don has led Georgia at nine of 11 tournaments finished as individual runner up three times, including the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic.
Collectively, Bulldogs have notched par-or-better scores in 62 of 180 round this season, 34.4 percent of their total loops.
Bulldogs Lead The League In SEC Women’s Golf Titles
Georgia has captured a league-leading 19 SEC Women’s Golf Championships. The Bulldogs have won 11 team titles and eight medalist honors.
Florida ranks second with 18 conference championships, nine team and nine individual titles, while Auburn ranks third with 16 crowns, 10 team and six individual.
The Bulldogs, Gators and Tigers have combined to capture 53 of the 84 all-time SEC titles in women’s golf.
Don Making The Most Of Fifth Season AT UGA
Caterina Don is enjoyed the best season of her career. A two-time All-SEC honoree, the fifth-year senior from Pinerolo, Italy, is on track to put her 2023-24 campaign among the best ever by any Bulldog.
Most notably, Don’s current average of 71.16 would be the third-best ever for UGA.
In addition, Don already has recorded 20 par-or-better scores – in 31 rounds – this season. That already ranks as the fourth-most ever by a Bulldog in a single season.
UGA’s all-time leaders in season average and par-or-better rounds are listed below.
UGA Single-Season Records
Season Stroke Average
RK. GOLFER, SEASON AVG.
1. Jenny Bae, 2022-23 70.75
2. Jillian Hollis, 2017-18 71.04
Caterina Don, 2023-24 • 73.16 entering SECs
3. Marta Silva Zamora, 2010-11 71.52
4. Bailey Tardy, 2015-16 72.06
5. Jillian Hollis, 2016-17 72.12
6. Caterina Don, 2019-20 72.15
Par-Or-Better Rounds
RK. GOLFER, SEASON No.
1. Jenny Bae, 2022-23 25
2. Bailey Tardy, 2015-16 22
Marta Silva Zamora, 2010-11 22
4. Caterina Don, 2023-24 20
5. Jillian Hollis, 2017-18 18
New Bulldogs Sport MWC Experience & Accolades
Two of the six Bulldogs traveling to this weekend’s SEC Championships are graduate transfers with stellar results in the Mountain West Conference.
Napat “Jenny” Lertsadwattana and Bernice Olivarez Ilas joined the Georgia roster following standout careers at New Mexico and San Diego State, respectively.
Lertsadwattana was medalist last year’s MWC Championships, leading the Lobos to a sweep of the team and individual titles. She was the 2020 MWC Freshman of the Year and earned All-MWC honors each of the past three seasons.
Olivarez Ilas was named All-MWC in 2022 after finishing sixth at the league championships, one of three top-20s in three appearances at the league championships (12th in 2021 and 17th in 2023). She also was named MWC Golfer of the Week on April 14, 2023 following a standout performance at the Riverside Classic.
Cowart Credits Mental Game To Improved Performances
Numbers wise, junior LoraLie Cowart has enjoyed a breakout season in 2023-24.
After compiling a 75.60 stroke average with four par-or-better efforts in 42 career rounds as a freshman and sophomore, Cowart sports at 72.97 average with 14 POBs in 31 loops this season.
“I seriously mean it when I say my mental game is much better,” Cowart said prior to the FSU Match Up. “Before, I would stand over the golf ball and I wasn’t able to mentally pull the trigger. Now, I stand over the golf ball, and I’m like ‘This is going to go where I want it to and if not who cares? I’ll just go play the next shot.’ I was almost halted by the thought of things not working out like I wanted them to.”
Where does Cowart think that has made the biggest difference?
“I would say my wedges are better,” she said. “A lot of that has to do with how much Josh and our program puts an emphasis on that and how much work we do with wedges. I’m talking about from about 50-115 yards. We do a lot of work with that because those are your scoring clubs. I think my freshman and sophomore year, and I’m just going to be blunt, I didn’t buy into it. I’ve bought into it. That that’s really what makes a golfer elite in terms of going from junior to college golf.”
The Bulldogs Stand Out In The Classroom To
Georgia’s women’s golfers sported the best grade point average of all 21 UGA athletic teams during the fall semester.
The Bulldogs combined to post a 3.67 GPA in the fall, which actually lowered the team’s cumulative GPA to a 3.72.
Georgia awards the Faculty Athletics Representative’s Award annually to the women’s and men’s teams with the highest GPA for the academic year. The golfers have won the award 13 times, lastly in 2021, and owned a .06 edge over cross country after the fall semester.
De Bock Arrives With Stellar Competitive Resume
Savannah De Bock joined the Bulldogs as a mid-year enrollee in January and has been a steady contributor since.
De Bock chose to remain in Europe during the fall to compete in three prestigious events – the PING Junior Solheim Cup, the World Junior Girls Championship and the World Amateur Team Championship.
De Bock posted a 3-0 record to help Europe defeat the U.S., 15-9, at the Junior Solheim Cup at La Zagaleta Golf Club in Benahavis, Spain. De Bock also was a member of Europe’s winning team in the 2021 PING Junior Solheim Cup.
De Bock finished fourth at the World Junior Girls Championship, her second straight top-5 effort after tying for fifth in 2022.
Those results headline an impressive ledger of results at the junior level. Most notably, De Bock won the 2022 European Ladies Amateur at Golf de Saint-Germain outside Paris. She defeated Charlotte Heath on the fourth hole of a playoff after both golfers finished 72 holes at 19-under.
Bulldogs Looking For Fourth Straight Top-20 Finish at NCAAs
Georgia enters the 2024 postseason looking to continue an impressive run at the NCAA Championships.
The Bulldogs have posted top-20 efforts at each of the past three NCAAs. Included in the that is Georgia’s first appearance in the match play bracket since the current format was introduced in 2015.
After finishing 18th in 2021, the Bulldogs tied for fifth in 2022 after falling to eventual national champion Stanford, 3-2, in the quarterfinals of match play. Georgia finished 14th at last year’s NCAAs.
The Bulldogs have been extremely successful at the NCAA Regional level the past three years. Led by Jenny Bae winning medalist honors, Georgia swept team and individual titles at Regionals in Columbus, Ohio in 2021 and Athens last spring.
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