On the surface, a chance to square off against a top-10 opponent is an eye-catching matchup for the ISU women’s golf team.

On Feb. 1, No. 32/32 Iowa State, ranked by Golfweek/Golfstat, will travel to West Palm Beach, Fla. for an exhibition match against No. 9/8 Northwestern.

Despite the intriguing matchup that features two NCAA Championship teams from a year ago, the Cyclones insisted that the outcome of the match is of little importance.

Instead, a greater emphasis will be placed on gaining quality reps outdoors and adjusting to playing full rounds of golf again, a nonexistent luxury during the Ames winter.

For senior Chonlada Chayanun, the two-day trip that includes a day of practice and a day for matches is a welcome way to begin the season versus diving straight into tournament play.

“I like this better because we don’t get to play on a course here because it’s cold and snowy,” Chayanun said. “So I think this is a good match to practice and warm up and get ready for the real tournament.”

In the eyes of ISU coach Christie Martens, she sees the weekend as a way to begin the process of adjusting from a practice mindset to a tournament mindset.

“We’re going to get our process goals and really be sure that we know what to focus on,” Martens said. “That is the one thing of going from tournament mindset to practice mindset and in between those, so it’s going to be about sort of changing the focus from improvement to [playing for a] score and how we go about that.”

The two days of practice in Florida will serve as the team’s only time to play a full round of golf before the season begins Feb. 8 at the Central Florida Challenge.

Despite the limited outdoor practice, Martens said the winter months are when she sees the most improvement from her team. Whether it be at the team’s new practice facility or at short-game practice at the turf field at the Bergstrom Football Complex, the Cyclones use some creativity to overcome the lack of outdoor practice.

“It’s a fun time of the year for us because it’s so good for just overall game improvement,” Martens said. “[Assistant coach Pina Gentile] made these new, awesome targets at Bergstrom that are pretty awesome just for trajectory and distance control. We’ve been having a lot of fun with those and just different contests.”

“There’s really no better time for them to develop their games than this time of the year.”