The Iowa State women’s golf team will begin this week traveling to Tucson, Arizona, for the Arizona Wildcat Invitational following a three week layoff since its last tournament. This year’s Wildcat Invitational will be a two-day 54-hole tournament on March 9-10.

This event will be a bit unfamiliar territory for Iowa State, as it has only played at the Wildcat Invitational one time, but it has played at the course twice. Last season it finished in fourth place at the Wildcat Invitational and then backed that up with a first place finish a week later in a different event played at the same course.

The Wildcat Invitational will be hosted by the University of Arizona. Its home turf has been the Sewailo Golf Course since December of 2013. The Sewailo Golf Course measures at 7,400 total yards, as it was designed by PGA professional course designers Notah Begay III and Ty Butler. It will play at a par of 72 for this year’s invitational.

The theme of Iowa State’s 2019-20 campaign has been inconsistency. At time it looks like it can play with anyone, but inversely there are times where it truly struggles to find a rhythm. Since the spring season has began, the Cyclones have struggled with recording a consistent amount of birdies. They finished with only 47 total birdies in their first tournament and they followed that up with 27 total two weeks ago, which ranked second to last out of the entire field.

The success that Iowa State is having has been coming from its underclassmen. 

Freshman Liyana Durisic’s season stroke average of 72.71 is on pace to break the school’s freshman scoring mark of 73.33 set by Celia Barquin Arozamena in 2015. Her success is being recognized nationally as she is currently the highest ranked Cyclone on GolfStat’s rankings, rated as the 118th best golfer in the country.

Freshman Ruby Chou and Sophomore Taglao Jeeravivitaporn are not too far behind. Taglao ranks 152nd and Chou should be right behind, as her success in only continuing to improve.

Even though the Cyclones have gotten off to a slow start in the Spring season, they’re still viewed as a top 50 program nationally, as they rank 49th in GolfWeek’s latest installment of its team leaderboard.

This year’s Arizona Wildcat Invitational at the Sewailo Golf Course should provide Iowa State with a great opportunity to get back on track after a disappointing 11th place finish to its last tournament in Puerto Rico.