We just returned from dinner after our first round of the season, and we're tied for 11th after a 343. The story of the day was sophomore Louise Buckler, who matched her career best with an 84. Meghan Gajare also played fairly well with an 88, but our top two players struggled a bit.

I'm just sitting here in the hotel about 30 minutes prior to us leaving for the course to prepare for our first competitive round of the season, my eighth at Carleton (hard to believe). Our players have worked hard this summer and this first week of preseason practices, and hopefully we can go out and perform this afternoon.

It's been a very busy week as we're preparing for the start of our competitive schedule at the UW-Eau Claire Fall Invitational. We've had a great week of practices and we found out that we'll open the season ranked 23rd in the Golf World/NGCA Division III coaches poll.

The official start of the 2008-09 season, the 11th in the history of Carleton women's golf, is tomorrow morning when our team gathers for our first official practice of the season. We head into the season much more experienced than a year ago and excited to see where the journey of the upcoming season takes us.

For five days, I was lucky enough to work with the USGA Media Relations team, assisting them in serving the media during the US Women's Open at Interlachen Country Club in nearby Edina, Minn. I saw every player in the field and even had a chance to chat (albeit for a very short amount of time) with young guns Inbee Park (the eventual champ), Angela Park and Stacy Lewis, as well as veterans Helen Alfredsson (runner-up), top-ranked Lorena Ochoa and defending champion Christie Kerr.

We opened up our 2008 spring season in fine fashion today, shooting a 343 team score. This is probably one of the top Division III fields of the season, so it felt great to get off to a good start. We’re in ninth place, and the field includes 10 other nationally ranked teams. We’re ahead of #5 Illinois Welseyan, #7 Wartburg, #12 Amherst and #13 UW-Whitewater, but we still have 36 holes left, but I still couldn’t be more pleased with our start.

Today, we headed south back down to Jacksonville to tee it up at the TPC Sawgrass. This is the site of the PGA Tour’s Players Championship, which used to be in March but moved to a mid-May date two years ago. We played Dye Valley, as in course architect Pete Dye. It was a very demanding course, but I thought the girls handled it very well. The playing was almost secondary to the experience surrounding the golf for the players. The clubhouse is immaculate and the service first-rate.