The Colorado women’s golf team finished the first day of the GameAbove Invitational in ninth place on Mar. 9 at Rolling Hills Country Club.
The tournament is significant for the Buffaloes as they look to improve their standing against a competitive field, with top-ranked teams such as USC and Texas A&M leading the leaderboard.
Carolyn Fuller led Colorado by shooting a 3-under-par 69 in the second round, moving her to even par for the tournament and tying her for seventh place overall. Fuller improved by 22 spots between rounds one and two, rebounding from an opening round of 75. Her performance included a strong back nine score of 34, helping anchor Colorado’s late push.
Head coach Madeleine Sheils said, “I thought Rolling Hills played tough today. It demands your full focus and a lot of decision making on every single shot, and we struggled to make and execute those good decisions consistently throughout the day. Our short game also wasn’t as sharp as we need it to be, so we lost a good amount of shots around the hole.” Despite these challenges, Sheils praised Fuller’s play: “Carolyn played beautifully this afternoon. Three under is an awesome score on a course where really par is your friend on more than half of the holes. She had really great focus and used awesome course management to put herself in good position time and time again.”
Other Colorado golfers included Ellen O’Shaughnessy at nine over par after two rounds, Teemapat Pateetin at seven over, Vanessa Ngo at thirteen over, and Maya McVey at sixteen over through 36 holes.
USC leads the team competition at thirteen under par, followed by Texas A&M at one over. The Buffaloes will group with Arizona and UCLA for Tuesday’s final round starting from the tenth tee at 9 a.m. Mountain Time.
Sheils said about preparing for the final round: “We talked about the need to learn quickly from today. We have to be fast learners, ready to take lessons from how to play shots strategically into and around these greens.”
