Julia Lopez Ramirez of Mississippi State lands SEC individual title

14 Apr 2023
by Jim Young of AmateurGolf.com
see also: View results for SEC Women's Championship, Pelican Golf Club, Julia Lopez Ramirez Rankings
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Mississippi State's Julia Lopez Ramirez came from five shots back to win the Southeastern Conference's individual championship on Friday at Greystone Golf and Country Club’s Legacy Course in Birmingham, Ala.

After carding rounds of 69-75 in the rain and strong swirling winds on Thursday, Ramirez found herself tied for fifth place, five strokes back of Auburn's Megan Schofill, who sat at 5-under 139.

Playing five groups in front of Schofill, Ramirez went out in 2-under and added birdies in 10 and 18 to finish with a 68 and take the clubhouse lead at 4-under. Schofill had some shots to play with but three consecutive bogeys on holes 12, 13 and 15 led to a final round of 2-over 74 and a second-place finish.

Ramirez, who hails from Malaga, Spain, has top-five finishes in seven of her nine starts this season, including her fourth individual win in the Blessings Collegiate Invitational in October and runner-up in the UCF Challenge in February. She has not finished outside the top 20 in any start this season for Mississippi State.

Aine Donegan (-2) of LSU was the only other player in the field who managed to break par on the Legacy Course.

Behind a 5-under 67 from junior Carla Tejedo, LSU was the only team in the field to break par on Friday with a 4-under 284 to finish 11-strokes ahead of second-place Auburn to secure the top-seed heading into Saturday's match play portion of the tournament.

LSU will face eighth-seed Ole Miss in the opening quarterfinal beginning at 7 a.m. The other matches will pit Auburn against South Carolina, Texas A&M vs. Florida while Vanderbilt will take on Mississippi State.

Since the SEC switched to a match-play format in 2018, a No. 1 seed has never won the championship. LSU will look to become the first come Sunday.

“Our goal to start the year was to be in the final pairing of every tournament and so far, we have done that,” said LSU Coach Garrett Runion. “Our goal was to be the number one seed (at SECs) heading to match play and we have done that. We know that no team has won match play twice since they have gone to the match play format. We know no number one seed has won the match play and so this whole year we have been ‘Why not us?’ Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to break the trend.”

The semifinals will start shortly after the quarterfinal matches with the championship match set for Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m. ET.

LSU Athletic Communications contributed to this report.

Results: SEC Women's Championship