Delaney leads Kent State University home

Curtis Cup player Tara Delaney led Kent State University home in their opening tournament of the spring collegiate golf season as the Golden Flashes placed 12th in the 54-hole Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge at Palos Verdes, California.

Kent State, ranked 25th in the nation, were one of a dozen top 25 teams in the tournament, five of which were in the top 10. Delaney, from Carlow, finished 16-over-par, 229, for her three rounds (77, 78, 74), while her older sister Karen carded 30-over 243 (84, 79, 80) for a share of 64th place.

Their team was 86-over-par for the tournament, won at 30-over by ninth-ranked Pepperdine, for whom Misun Cho of Korea was the medallist at five over. The Californian university were nine shots clear of second-placed Arizona State, ranked second in the USA heading into the event.

Co. Down’s Danielle McVeigh helped 26th-ranked Texas A&M ruffle a few feathers at Palos Verdes. The Aggies upstaged plenty of higher ranked rivals to finish tied for sixth, with freshman McVeigh, 19, tying for 34th on 18 over.

Escaping the deep freeze on Saturday will be the University of Minnesota’s Niall Turner, who tunes up for the spring campaign in Phoenix, Arizona, when Minnesota hosts its annual Phoenix Alumni

Challenge.

Turner, from Cork, led the Minnesota team to third place overall in the 2006 national finals, the NCAA Championships, after tying for 10th place on the individual leaderboard.

He goes into his final season ranked 48th in the United States men’s collegiate rankings. The Phoenix Alumni Challenge is a chance for the Minnesota Gophers squad, including Turner’s fellow former Presentation Brothers College student David Daly, to get some golf under their belts

in warm weather.

After that the golf will get very serious indeed as head coach Brad James bids to recapture the national title he won in his first year at the helm in 2002.