FRANKLIN, Tenn. – A challenging back nine of the final day of the Mason Rudolph Championship kept the Arizona Women’s Golf from winning their season-opening tournament but finished with a well-earned runner-up finish on Sunday. The Wildcats finished the event at 15-under par and four strokes behind tournament champion Mississippi State. Arizona finished the weekend with three players in the top 12 of the leaderboards in Gile Bite Starkute, Carolina Melgrati and Lilas Pinthier.
“We entered the final holes of the tournament in a position to win but came up a little short,” said head coach Laura Ianello. “Credit to Mississippi State who went very low on Sunday to win. Our team had a great weekend and battled until the very end. We have a lot of positives to take away from this tournament as our entire lineup carded some very good scores throughout the three days, including some career bests.”
Starkute finished tied for ninth at 4-under for the tournament to lead the Wildcats. It was the third top-10 finish of her career after shooting 2-under in each of the final two rounds of the weekend. The sophomore tandem of Melgrati and Pinthier tied for 11th place at 3-under par, which marked the second-best finish of Pinthier’s career.
The runner-up finish for the Wildcats was the program’s highest team finish in an event since winning the 2020 Wildcat Invitational. It was also Arizona’s best finish in a season-opening tournament since finishing runner-up at the ANNIKA Invitational in 2015.
The Wildcats will return to action as part of the field of the Windy City Classic in Illinois on October 3 and 4.
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