• The KillerFrogs

TCU Golf 2021-2022

JogginFrog

Active Member
Oklahoma State hasn't faced much of a challenge yet this year--won its first tournament by 13 shots and its second by 21. But the Frogs are pushing the Cowgirls today in San Marcos. TCU has closed a 10-shot gap to 5 with 3 holes to play. I wasn't sure if the Frogs would hold onto second, much less push for first, but they are putting in a good team performance with 4 players under par for the day.

Individually, Caitlyn Macnab's lead is 1 with 2 holes to play.

Edit: Ugh--Macnab finishes bogey-par while McGinty goes birdie-birdie to win by 2.
 
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JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU women shoot the best score of the day to finish second in San Marcos and set three more school records.

Low 18-hole round (set yesterday at 276) fell again, as the Frogs posted 275. The 54-hole team mark, which a few weeks ago was 854 (-12), is now 832 (-32). And Caitlyn Macnab just beat Sabrina Iqbal's individual 54-hole score, posting 203.

I wasn't quite convinced that this team deserved its top-20 ranking, but the Frogs left no doubt this week. They beat a pair of top-15 teams by 17 and 21 shots; and today they were better than the #2 team in the country.

I think the new team records may hold for a while. We'll have to see about the individual record.

Besides Macnab's runner-up finish, Sabrina Iqbal posted her third straight top-5 finish at -9. Her scoring average for the season holds at 69.0. Lois Lau shot a career-best 66 to finish T7 at -8.

Well done, ladies!

The women will be back in action next week in Mississippi at The Ally, where they'll face top-10 SEC teams Arkansas and Florida.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
New Golfstat rankings are out today. TCU women jump to #12. That's as high as I can remember seeing them; they sniffed the top 20 last year after a couple of good fall showings but dropped back to around 40th, which was fair. The Golfstat rankings are algorithm driven and consider stroke margins, so more meaningful than finishing 2nd was the way they beat the rest of the field by 16+ strokes.

Golfweek hasn't updated to include the Frogs' latest win, so we'll have to see where they show up there.

Edit: Individually, Sabrina Iqbal is ranked 8th, which is as high as I've seen any TCU player since Julien Brun. Caitlyn Macnab is 31st.

The men show up at 51st in the rankings; they should move up in time.
 
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JogginFrog

Active Member
Hard not to wish the Frogs still had Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, given his play this season. In 3 starts he's gone T3, T2, 1st in some strong fields and sits 11th in the Golfstat player standings. Interviewed yesterday by Golf Channel.

Focusing on loyal Frogs in action this week, Annika Clark begins play tomorrow in stage 2 of the LPGA/Symetra Tour's Q School. This is where the competition gets stiff, with qualifiers from stage 1 going against existing Symetra Tour players and LPGA pros outside of the top 150, along with current college players testing the waters or just using the tournament as a measuring stick. Field of 180 will compete over 72 holes in Venice, FL, with the top 45 advancing to the final phase of LPGA qualifying. Those who finish will earn a level of Symetra Tour status for the coming year. Follow progress here:
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU men will be on the course in an hour at the Golf Club of Georgia Collegiate. TCU is playing Oleson, Laussot, Frimodt, Gums and Allkins--all but Oleson played in this event two years ago when the Frogs tied at the bottom of the leaderboard.

Allkins placed 11th that year, and he co-led the Frogs in qualifying this week, so this event could be good for him. It's 54 holes over 3 days at the Golf Club of Georgia, which is known for super-fast greens.

The Frogs are the only Big 12 team in the 15-team field, which features 8 teams ranked in the top 25.

Cross-regional events tend to play a bigger role in the rankings than others because you get fewer points of comparison with teams over the course of a season. It's also the last event of the fall, so the Frogs need to keep the ball in play and get off to a good start. A finish in the top half of the field would be good.

TCU is off first this a.m., paired with UVa and Colorado State. Follow progress here: http://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=team&tid=23305
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU will be represented in the upcoming Spirit International by Filippo Celli, who will be among the two amateur men on the 4-player Italian team in early November at Whispering Pines. Celli will b at least the third TCU player to appear in the event--Mateo F de O and Alejandro Aguilera played for the Argentinian and Spanish teams, respectively, in the 2019 edition.

It's quite the elite-golf-camp-&-tournament event, and a great opportunity for top amateurs to rep their country. Here's an interview with Filippo in which he talks about the event and his experience at TCU: https://www.thespiritgolf.com/filippo-celli-team-italy/

Team lineups are still being determined, but I would expect to see Caitlyn Macnab get a nod to rep South Africa. The RSA is confirmed as a participant but I have not seen a lineup announced. Macnab is 7th in the GolfRSA women's amateur rankings, but she leads that list in points-per-event, and she is ranked 2nd in WAGR among South African women after Auburn's Kaleigh Telfer. I think already being in the States may be an additional consideration for national golf associations weighing travel costs.
Full team lineups for the Spirit International were announced Friday. Caitlyn Macnab will represent South Africa, giving TCU a player among the men and among the women.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU men beat USC by 16 shots at Colonial earlier this month. They are 2 back of the Trojans heading into today's final round at the Golf Club of Georgia Invitational. Would be good if TCU could catch USC, UCLA and the Georgia Tech B team.

Usually a poor result comes from too many bad holes by multiple players. This week, it's simply not enough birdies. Frogs are way behind most of the rest of the field in that category.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Frogs with the 3rd-best score of the day in Atlanta. Their -13 final day brought them under par for the tournament and moved them up past USC, UCLA & the Georgia Tech B team (which actually posted the 4th-best round) into 11th place. Not a great result, but at least they cut down on the damage today.

Great round by Thomas Allkins (65), who finished T9, improving on his T11 result from 2019. Aymeric Laussot had a 68 and Justin Gums a 69, highlighted by a 4-hole stretch where he went -6 (birdie-eagle-eagle-birdie).

This event didn't set up well for TCU, but good to have a round like that when it's going to be 3+ months until your next tournament.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Annika Clark faced a hard road to get to the final series of LPGA qualifying after opening with a 79, but she did well to play the last two rounds in even par, and by finishing she earned Symetra Tour status the the upcoming season.

Quite a few recent college stars did not advance, including Oklahoma State's Maja Stark, who won twice this fall on the Ladies European Tour, Curtis Cupper Olivia Mehaffey (Arizona State) and U.S. Women's Amateur champ Gabby Ruffles (USC), who (edit) missed the cut by 1.
 
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JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU women are in Clay County, Mississippi, this week--birthplace of blues legend Howlin' Wolf. It's unlikely that today's college students will have Smokestack Lightning on their playlist, but your day will be better if you do.

If you wonder what it would be like for TCU to play in the SEC, The Ally tournament will give you a good idea. Frogs face off against 11 SEC teams over 54 holes this week in their last event of the fall. Not sure how TCU wound up in this event; wonder if there's an Angela Stanford-Ally Ewing connection--Ewing's husband Chris coaches host Mississippi State.

TCU projects as the third-best team in the field based on early-season performance, but cross-regional competition is often a challenge, and it doesn't help that the Frogs are paired with the two lowest-ranked teams in the field, Mizzou and Tennessee.

TCU will be playing the same lineup as in recent events: Macnab, Iqbal, Lau, Pacheco and Jordaan. Old Waverly Golf Club is the course where Juli Inkster won a U.S. Women's Open in 1999.

Follow progress here: http://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=team&tid=23961
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU women are in 4th place after the first round in Mississippi. They shoot -3 as a team--another solid score in a fall that has been full of them. Even more impressive to do it when paired with teams shooting +12 and +20.

Frogs were led today by Valeria Pacheco, whose 68 (T4) was her fifth under-par round of the season. Sabrina Iqbal (who cranked out another 69 today) and Caitlyn Macnab have gotten most of the headlines, but Val's play has contributed a ton to the Frogs' success so far. This is a player who averaged 76.3 over her first two years, with 11 rounds of 80 or higher. She improved a lot last year (74.7 avg.), and she just keeps getting better--today's score drops her season average under 72.

Pacheco's reward is a pairing with reigning U.S. Women's Am champ Jensen Castle, as TCU is paired with Kentucky and 3rd-ranked Arkansas in the early groups tomorrow.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Sabrina Iqbal earns a spot in the early-season discussion about candidates for the Annika Award (female college player of the year) based on her 3 top-5 finishes.

So far, the discussion has revolved around Stanford freshman rose Zhang, who won each of her first three college events, and Arkansas senior Brooke Matthews, who has won twice, including once by 13 shots.

But Iqbal leads Matthews by 5 after the first round in Mississippi, as well as fellow watch-list member Auston Kim of Vanderbilt. Others playing this week include LSU's Lindblad (tied with Iqbal at -3) and A&M's Garcia-Poggio (-1).
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU women are in 5th place in Mississippi with a round to go. Today's score wasn't as good as yesterday's but they outplayed #3 Arkansas head to head--second tournament in a row where they've been paired with a top-3 team and outscored them.

It's a total team effort--all 5 Frogs are between Even and +4 for the tournament. No one in the top 15 but none worse than T36 in a 72-player field.

Caroline Jordaan has a lot of fight and it paid off again today. She was +6 through 8 holes and it looked like her score would be the one discarded. But she didn't let the round get away from her, and 3 straight birdies at the end produced a hard-working 75 that was needed when a teammate suffered a back-nine triple. That's just what you want to see from a 5-slot player--occasional strong rounds and a never-give-in spirit on the other days.

Frogs have some teams close on their heels but have an outside chance at a top-3 finish as well. If they can hold or improve, I think they'll count it a good week.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Not a great day for the women as they finish T7 in Mississippi. Would have liked to see them in the top half of the field, but they had some bright spots, beating third-ranked Arkansas and other solid teams in Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Sabrina Iqbal just missed a fourth straight top 10, finishing T11 at -2 in a field that had 8 players ranked in the top 25 of Golfstat's individual rankings.

One issue this week was a lack of production from the 1 slot; when your anchor player finishes several strokes behind her teammates, it's hard to post a great team score. Maybe the course didn't suit her eye--Old Waverly's back nine plays around a pond with trouble consistently on the left. Two holes accounted for 10 of her 12 strokes lost to par.

Hopefully she can shake it off and have a great performance next week at the Spirit International.

That wraps up the fall slate for both the men and women. Both will be back in action in February--men in Hawaii Feb. 3-5; women in Humble, Tex., Feb. 21-22.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
TCU-related golf happening later this week with Filippo Celli and Caitlyn Macnab teeing off in The Spirit International on Thursday; also Julien Brun has a chance to top the Order of Merit of the European Challenge Tour in its season finale this weekend.

Meanwhile, here's a story about how tight the margins can be between playing for PGA Tour prize money and playing for much less on the Korn Ferry Tour.



Rodgers finished solo 4th this weekend in Bermuda--banked $318,500.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Julien Brun is T7 after one round of the Challenge Tour Grand Final in Mallorca. Cream rising to the top fast there, with 5 of the top 10 on the Order of Merit in the top 6 and all but points-leader Tarrio T15 or better.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
I had the scoring all wrong for The Spirit--they changed the format this year. Instead of best ball, the women and men play combined stroke total and the mixed team score is best 3 of 4. That puts a lot more stress on players, who can't rely on their teammate for a better-ball score.

Caitlyn Macnab shot even yesterday in cold, wet conditions and was in the top 10, but the wheels came off on the back nine today, including a quad at the risk-reward par-4 14th. If you don't clear the hazard or hit the "George Bush tree," you're re-teeing, and the women have to navigate a tighter line than the men. Watching coverage on Golf Channel, I saw U.S. Am champ James Piot hit the tree but somehow stay out of the hazard.

Celli also with a couple of "others" on his card today. Tough course.
 
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