Tigers begin postseason with SEC Championship

AUBURN, Ala. – It's championship season again. Beginning Wednesday, the Auburn women's golf team will begin the postseason with the 2021 SEC Championship at Greystone Golf & Country Club (Par 72, 6,253 yards) in Birmingham, Alabama. 

"We're so excited and so happy to be going to postseason," Auburn head coach Melissa Luellen said. "It's something that kind of got taken away last year, so we're very grateful and very excited."

All 14 SEC teams will open the tournament with three rounds of stroke play Wednesday through Friday, and then the top eight teams will advance to match play beginning Saturday. 

Auburn, a nine-time SEC champion, is coming off a semifinals appearance in the 2019 event, and four of the five golfers who played on that squad are back in the lineup this week for the Tigers. The fifth, junior Brooke Sansom, will be the team's alternate. 

The newcomer to the group is sophomore Megan Schofill who will be making her postseason debut this week. Schofill paced Auburn at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic last week, finishing tied for 10th overall, and earned the top spot in the lineup for this week's SEC Championship. She leads the team with an average score of 72.47 per round this season. 

Schofill will be followed by fifth-year senior Elena Hualde Zuniga who returned to the team this spring and has played in each of the last two tournaments. 

"I just want to play (the SEC Championship) like another tournament," Hualde Zuniga said. "With the same desired outcome of winning obviously, but just taking it one day at a time, one shot at a time, and hopefully we'll get what we want."

Seniors Kaleigh Telfer, Mychael O'Berry and Julie McCarthy make up the rest of the lineup. The veteran trio has eight top-20 finishes between them this season, and all three played a major role in Auburn's postseason run at SECs and NCAAs two years ago. 

"This is an experienced lineup, good chemistry, and I'm excited for them," Luellen said. "I can feel some really good energy."

The Tigers will tee off at 8:50 a.m. CT on Wednesday. For the first round, they will be paired with Arkansas and Georgia. Live scoring can be found on golfstat.com.