Baylor Bear Insider
Since the Baylor women's golf team has yet to line up against many teams outside of the Big 12 and regionally, it's hard to know exactly how good this team is.
It's safe to say, though, after becoming the first Big 12 team to win four-consecutive tournaments, the No. 1-ranked Bears are "pretty darn good."
After sweeping the team and individual titles in three fall tournaments, Baylor was a wire-to-wire winner in this week'sTrinity Forest Invitational, capturing the team title in the Dallas tournament by 14 shots. Freshman Hannah Karg rolled in a 30-foot birdie putt on her last hole in Tuesday's final round to become the third different Baylor player to earn medalist honors this season.
"I think I've been doing this long enough to know what we've got," Baylor head coach Jay Goble, "and it's pretty darn good. I'm very confident that we're a top-5 team in the country right now, without seeing anybody else, because I know what kind of scoring averages we're having and what kind of play I'm seeing. We have a top-5 team in the country, for sure."
What makes this team so historically good is that it's not just four or five deep, Goble has a top seven that any of them could play at the top of the lineup. Playing as individuals at the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational in the fall, junior Diane Baillieux and freshman Nina Lang both finished in the top 10.
"At home, Nina is shooting under-par almost every round, and she can't get in the lineup," Goble said of Lang, who had a 71.83-stroke average as an individual in two fall tournaments. "She shoots a lot of 1- and 2-under-pars. But, in qualifying, Rosie (Belsham) had a 6-under one day and Hannah had a 5-under a couple of rounds. It's nuts.
"It's a good problem to have and we're praying for everyone to stay healthy and be able to continue to play like we are. . . . We're trying to limit contact as much as we can, because we know we have a good team and we want to play."
Playing in its largest field to date (14 teams), Baylor jumped out to a double-digit lead on the first day with an opening-round score of 4-under 284. When play was suspended by darkness in the middle of Monday's second round, Oklahoma and Texas were the only teams within 30 strokes of the lead.
"This is just a special group," Goble said. "It's pretty amazing to watch the play. And gosh, they fight hard for shots and fight hard to play well. They're just tough."
Finishing the 54-hole tournament at 1-over 865, the Bears were 14 shots ahead of Oklahoma State and 26 clear of a Texas team that was ranked No. 1 last spring.
Karg, who had a top-10 finish at the season-opening Schooner Fall Classic, came from five shots back to win her first collegiate medalist honor. Making eight birdies, she shot 4-under par 68 in Tuesday's final round and 5-under 211 for the tournament, beating Oklahoma State's Maja Stark by one shot.
"Her last 19 holes, she was 5-under," Goble said of Karg, who ranks fifth on the team with a 72.50 average. "The thing about it is you can hit some great shots on that golf course, and you're not always rewarded for them. You could get a bad bounce into a hazard or a bad bounce into high grass or off the green, and then you have an impossible chip. There is danger lurking on every shot, basically, on that golf course."
Because of an error in scoring on the Golfstat site, Goble thought Karg had dropped to second with a three-putt bogey on her penultimate hole, falling one shot behind Stark. When he told the second-year freshman from Hamburg, Germany, that she had dropped out of the lead, she said, "It's OK, I've already won a professional event."
"And then, she makes a 30-foooter on the last hole to win, knowing she had to make it to win, which is the even cooler part," Goble said.
Belsham, a true freshman from England who was the fifth player in the lineup, shot 3-under 69 in the first round and tied sixth-year senior Elodie Chapelet for third at 3-over 219. She was the only player in the field to record two eagles and also ranked among the leaders with 10 birdies, but "she has a lot of ups and downs on the golf course," Goble said.
"She goes birdie, eagle, and then goes bogey, bogey, bogey, bogey," Goble said. "She rides those highs, and then she rides those lows pretty badly as well. But, she has all the talent in the world. I don't think I've seen a player whose golf talent, physical talent, is as good as (former Baylor All-American) Hayley Davis' was. Rosie reminds me a ton of Hayley Davis. Just rips the ball, hits it super-fast for her size, has a great golf swing."
Goble sees the same things in freshman Britta Snyder, who recovered from a rough opening round to tie for ninth at 5-over 221. Snyder tied for third in the field with 11 birdies and posted her fourth top-10 finish.
"Britta just walks around with the confidence and swagger of a tour player, even though she's not there yet," Goble said. "She shoots a bad first round (7-over 79), and you'd never know it by walking up to her. She thinks she's going to shoot 65 every day."
Gurleen Kaur, who won back-to-back medalist honors at the Schooner Fall Classic and Betsy Rawls Invitational, finished on the team and tied for 23rd overall at 11-over 227.
"If you look back at the history of Gurleen, as the weather warms up, she warms up," Goble said. "By the end of March and the first of April, that's when she ends up playing her best golf. I don't think she needs to play her best golf right now. I think we're going to see her play awesome at the end of the year, which is when we need her to."
As tough as it's been on them not to make the travel squad, Goble's consistent message to Baillieux, Lang, junior Jordan Shackleford and second-year freshman Anika Veintemilla is to "be ready."
"In the year of COVID, I could pull somebody out and have to replace them in a moment's notice," he said. "So, regardless of whether you're traveling right now, you need to be ready for me to call you up and say, 'Hey, we're leaving tomorrow at 7 a.m. Get ready to go.' You need to be ready when the bell sounds. God forbid if we have to do it later in the year when it's maybe a little more important, you've got to be ready."
Baylor will play in the University of Houston's ICON Invitational at the Golf Club of Houston Feb. 22-23 and gets into the meat of its spring schedule with trips to the South Carolina Invitational in Columbia, S.C., the Mountainview Collegiate March 20-21 in Tucson, Ariz., and the PING/ASU Invitational March 27-28 in Phoenix.
"We're not getting all the experience against the best teams in the country that we usually do," Goble said, "but I think we're going to get some good looks at other teams here pretty soon."
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