Furman’s Anna Morgan, competing as an individual, shot an opening round even par 72 and is tied for sixth place, while the Gamecocks have had another bad start to the national final.

Morgan is 6th, 4 shots out of the lead

Morgan played the back nine at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale first and made 3 bogeys before carding her first birdie on her 9th hole (18th on the course).

The birdie got one shot back and birdies on her 13th and 16th holes (number 4 and number 7 on the course) got the SoCon Player of the Year back to even.

Morgan ended her round with a pair of pars and joins 11 other golfers at even par in a tie for 6th place.

The Lady Paladin from Spartanburg leads all the other individual entrants in the stroke play championship.

The individual lead is held by the number one ranked player in the country, Rose Zhang from Stanford, who posted a 4-under par 68 to hold a one-shot lead over Zoe Slaughter from Texas A&M.

Zhang and teammate Sadie Englemann, who is third, led the top ranked Stanford team to the top of the first round.

The Cardinal leads 19th ranked Texas A&M by 3-shots going into the second round.

NCAA Women’s Championship Individual scores https://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=player&tid=24975

Gamecocks are 20th in the 24 team field

On the day after USC coach Kaylen Anderson was named the SEC Co-Coach of the Year, the Gamecock got off to another poor start in the NCAA Championship.

South Carolina will have some work to do to climb into contention for one of the spots in the match play final.

The first round for the Gamecocks was not has bad as it was last year when they opened the championship in last place, but South Carolina is 20th out of the 24 teams in the championship.

USC wasn’t the only top 10 team to struggle in the first round. The 3rd ranked Gamecocks are a shot ahead of the two teams tied for 21st, 5th ranked San Jose State and 6th ranked Oklahoma State.

The Gamecocks shot a an 18 over par 306 and are 17-shots behind Stanford for the lead. They are 8-shots out of the last spot in the eight team match play championship bracket.

Last year the Gamecocks improved in the second and third round, but the poor first round kept USC from getting any closer than 13th.

Gamecock freshman Hanna Darling, who was named to the All-SEC First Team and is an Annika Award finalist, turned in the top score for USC carding a 3-over par 75 to finish the first day in a tie for 45th place.

South Carolina was forced to count a 79 among its scores as two Gamecocks finished at 7 over par.

NCAA Women’s Championship scores https://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=team&tid=24975