Photo - APSU Athletics
Austin Peay State University women’s golf has reached the long-awaited time of year when the Govs challenge their peers in the Ohio Valley Conference for supremacy at the 2018 OVC Women’s Golf Championships. This three-day, 54-hole event begins Monday at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
This is the first time since 2014 the women’s championship has been held at Muscle Shoals and the first time it will be contested on the par-72, 6,043-yard Schoolmaster Course; both previous iterations were played on the Fighting Joe course. Belmont, Eastern Illinois, Eastern Kentucky, Jacksonville State, Morehead State, defending champion Murray State, SIUE, Tennessee State and Tennessee Tech will represent their respective universities in addition to the Govs. The tourney will tee off 8 a.m., Monday; Austin Peay is scheduled to begin play at 8:50 a.m., paired with Belmont and Tennessee Tech.
These Govs come in with a wealth of experience. In addition to a fourth appearance from senior AnnaMichelle Moore and the third appearance for both Taylor and Ashton Goodley, even relative newcomers Meghann Stamps and Reagan Greene are battle-tested on the big stage, with Greene a two-time South Atlantic Conference All-Tournament team during her two seasons at Lincoln Memorial before returning to Clarksville. They’ll need to draw on that experience after a spring featuring just one 54-hole event, the opening Battle at Boulder Creek II in Las Vegas, with weather conspiring against the Govs seemingly at every turn.
The Goodley sisters will be at the top of the lineup this week, with Ashton at No. 1, followed by Taylor. Ashton leads the Govs in winning percentage (.750) and stroke average (77.11), while Taylor, after earning All-Newcomer honors as a freshman and All-OVC a year ago, seeks to complete the career trifecta with an All-Tournament bid this week—the top-five finishers in the tournament earn that honor, with Goodley coming agonizingly close last year with a ninth-place finish.
A pair of Clarksville natives follow the Goodleys in the lineup. Greene, who equaled Ashton Goodley with a team-high three top-10 finishes in three fewer tournaments, slots in as the No. 3, while Moore makes her fourth and final appearance in the tournament—she has five top-20 finishes this season, including a win to close out the fall at the Town and Country Invitational in Nashville.
The youngest Gov in the lineup might be one to watch this week. Stamps has played the best golf of her Austin Peay career in recent weeks, entering play with three straight top-20 finishes, including her first career top-five two weeks ago at the Murray State Invitational, where she opened up play with a career-low 71 in the first round.
(Courtesy Colby Wilson, APSU Associate Director of Athletics Communications)
