Indiana University Athletics
Tournament Diary: Anita Gahir
10/22/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
Oct. 22, 2006
Throughout the 2006-07 season, members of the Indiana women's golf team will be reporting their tournament travels for IUHOOSIERS.com. Freshman Anita Gahir chronicled the teams' travel to the Price's "Give 'Em Five Fund" New Mexico State Invitational.
"This past weekend, the IU women's golf team traveled to Las Cruces, N.M., for the Price's "Give `Em Five Fund" New Mexico State Invitational. We were all very excited to head south for our fourth tournament of the season. After flying into El Paso, Tex., on Saturday, Oct. 14, we had a beautiful drive into Las Cruces through mountains and a landscape prettier than many of us had ever seen. Once at the hotel, we got settled in and headed out to the golf course for a bit of putting practice before dinner. After about an hour, the team headed for dinner in the town of Mesilla. The restaurant was in a unique area and the meal itself was delicious. After eating, we headed back to the hotel and set our plans for the practice round on Sunday.
During our practice round, we saw a very different style golf club in front of us. The New Mexico State golf course was beautiful, and was surrounded by mountains and desert. The scenery alone was very intriguing to us. We played our practice round in the afternoon and took that time to study the layout and try to determine common patterns and breaks on the greens. After the round, we went in to have dinner in the clubhouse, then headed back to the hotel. The team met up, reflected on the practice round, discussed strategy for the golf course and gave each other helpful advice for the rest of the tournament. We were all really excited to get it started!
The next morning, Monday, Oct. 16, we headed to the golf course bright and early to begin the first round. As a team, we played hard and finished the day a bit behind the lead. The round was full of grinding and the entire team worked hard to finish each of our rounds strong. After we finished and had a bite to eat, a couple of us stayed to practice and others headed back to the hotel to get a couple of hours of studying in. Our minds were definitely full during our trip, but we all felt we did a good job separating golf and school while on the course. After that, we headed out for dinner and had our team meeting. We all knew what we wanted to get done in the second round.
Tuesday morning, we started our second round. We were all excited to go out and try the golf course again. The day itself was an improvement from the previous one. The team collectively beat our first day score by three strokes and we saw very positive things from each of our players. We knew we had it in us to shoot a very good number. The rest of the day consisted of a bit more studying, before a dinner filled with great company.
Wednesday was set to be a long travel day, but only after hopefully a great day of golf. We made a very memorable entrance to the driving range that morning, blasting our favorite team song, MC Hammer's 'You Can't Touch This.' It was a great way to get us psyched up and ready to play hard, while also shocking a few other teams.
The round itself was not as good as we had all hoped for, but the passion was there as we worked hard to finish the tournament strong. We did have players with improved scores and from this, we knew the tournament was a success. The team finished in 8th place out of 17 teams, only a few shots off of some good teams.
As a team, we saw many good things this week, and although we may not have finished exactly where we had wanted, we left New Mexico only that much more excited for our final tournament. We are off to Kiawah Island, S.C., in two weeks, ready to play strong and finish off an exciting and quality fall season."
