East Lake Cup
Where: East Lake Golf Club
Monday schedule: Men — LSU vs. Georgia, Southern Cal vs. Illinois; Women — Stanford vs. Duke, Baylor vs. Southern Cal.
Tuesday's schedule: Losers meet in consolation match, winners meet in championship match
TV: Golf Channel, 2-5 p.m. both days
Admission: Free
When Mariah Stackhouse left North Clayton High School for Stanford University, she was the most acclaimed female golfer to come out of Georgia in decades. Now a senior, Stackhouse is showing why she carried such high expectations.
Stackhouse and her Cardinal teammates are in town Monday and Tuesday to compete in the inaugural East Lake Cup, a match-play event at the East Lake Golf Club that features the four teams who reached the semifinals in this year’s NCAA men’s and women’s golf championships.
In the men’s draw on Monday, Georgia will play defending NCAA champion LSU and Southern Cal will play Illinois. In the women’s draw, defending champion Stanford will play Duke with Southern Cal playing Baylor. The consolations and championship matches will be held Tuesday. Play begins at 10 a.m. both days.
“I’m really looking forward to coming back,” said Stackhouse, who hasn’t played this close to home since the NCAA championships in Athens her freshman year. “East Lake is such a special place. The course is challenging and will make for great match play.”
Stackhouse is greatly responsible for helping Stanford win its first national championship last May. She won the deciding match over top-ranked Hayley Davis of Baylor, coming from 2-down with two holes remaining to take the victory on the 19th hole.
"That was a great memory, but teams change every year and you're playing different people," she said. "That was one single accomplishment and now it's a new year and you approach it with different goals."
Stackhouse became a big winner as a junior competitor in the Georgia State Golf Association. She was only 13 when she won the 2007 Georgia Girls Championship and the Georgia Women's Match Play Championship, becoming the youngest winner of that event.
In 2008, she successfully defended both titles, added the Georgia Women's Amateur and was named GSGA's top female golfer for the year. In 2009 she won her second state amateur and helped Georgia win the USGA's Women's State Team Championship.
Since her arrival at Stanford in 2013, she’s become a three-time All-American, been named All-Pac-12 for three years and competed on the winning U.S. Curtis Cup team in last year.
Stanford enters the tournament ranked third by Golfweek and led by senior Lauren Kim, who is ranked No. 1 among individuals. Stackhouse is ranked 32nd.
Georgia will be the local favorite on the men’s side. The Bulldogs, ranked No. 17, are led by U.S. Walker Cup member Lee McCoy, one of four starters from last year’s NCAA national semifinalists.
“It will be a good opportunity for us to play against some good competition and get some match-play experience,” Georgia coach Chris Haack said. “We don’t get a chance to play much match play other than the national championships.”