The Illinois women’s golf team placed seventh out of 14 teams at the Insperity Lady Jaguar Intercollegiate tournament at the Forest Hills Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., this weekend.

The competition was originally scheduled to last three days with a round of 18 holes to take place each day; however, the definite chance of rain on Sunday cut the tournament short. Instead, the Illini played one round Friday, while playing the remaining two Saturday.

Despite the change, head coach Renee Slone said it wasn’t a factor into how the golfers played because they’re used to competing in that format. Rather, the golf course simply got the best of them.

“This is one of those golf courses where sometimes you just have to really take your medicine and take your bogey and move on,” Slone said. “And we didn’t always do that, and that led to big numbers. And those add up very quickly, and it’s tough to recover from those.”

In the first round, the Illini had 25 bogeys and nine double bogeys, resulting in a combined score of 311. They were able to improve in the next round, though. With a decrease in both bogeys (23) and double bogeys (four), Illinois scored 300 in the second round.

The momentum didn’t carry into the final round, where the Illini had their worst round of the tournament. The golfers combined for 29 bogeys and 11 double bogeys to score a 317, but high scores were common for participating teams.

Illinois’ final score of 928 was 64-over-par. The lowest score of the tournament, 32-over-par, came from Vanderbilt. On the other end, the highest score came from Boston College’s 150-over-par. The same went for the individual scores as well.

“Sam (Postillion) finished in second place individually at 5-over par,” Slone said. “That doesn’t typically happen. Most tournaments that we’re playing in, 5-over-par isn’t going to be in second place, so it’s a great test.”

Postillion’s second-place finish didn’t surprise Slone, though. She actually anticipated it.

“The last couple of weeks during practice, she has really been extremely focused and has hit upon some things on the mental side of the game that have really started to click for her,” Slone said. “Based on how things have been progressing for her, I really felt that this would be a great tournament for her.

“She’s a real fighter and is able to bounce back well from her mistakes, and those are all qualities that are in high demand on this particular golf course.”

Although Postillion was the lone Illini to place in the top 10, she wasn’t the only fighter.

“As far as competing, they put forth full effort, competed hard every day all the way through till the very end,” Slone said. “Simply put, we didn’t have our A-game. It just wasn’t there as a team, and some weeks you have your A-game, and some weeks you don’t.”

Ashley can be reached at [email protected] and @wijangco12.