The William & Mary women's golf team opens the 2021 season at home on Sunday, hosting the Richmond Spiders in a dual match.  The Tribe and the Spiders will square off beginning at 12:10 p.m. on the famed River Course at Kingsmill Resort.

Format
The River Course, host to the LPGA's Kingsmill Open each spring and previously host to the PGA Tour's Michelob Open, will once again welcome the Tribe.  On Sunday, the par-72 layout will play at a compact 5,873 yards due to the last several weeks worth of precipitation.  W&M and Richmond have each designated five scoring players who will each play a full 18 holes.  Each team will then count the lowest four scores, with the lowest total winning the match.  Both teams will also have several non-scoring individuals playing the round as well.

Scouting the Tribe
W&M's scoring line-up will be led on Sunday by sophomore Cindy Zhou (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada), a second-team all-state honoree in 2019-20.  As a freshman, Zhou appearing in the scoring line-up in every event and ranked second on the team with a 75.35 stroke average, breaking the Tribe's rookie record and ranking fourth all-time in a single season.  Junior Sarah Houle (Sandy Hook, Conn.) averaged 74.92 strokes per round in 13 rounds, the second-best average in school history behind only Alessandra Liu's '16 NCAA-qualifying 72.14 in 2015-16.  Houle was 295-68 (.813) in head-to-head play, and enters the season third in career average with a 76.69 average all-time.  

Holding down the third spot in the line-up is sophomore Mikah McDonnell (Webster, N.Y.).  She averaged 80 strokes per round as freshman, tied for 16th all-time among Tribe rookies, but that doesn't tell the full story as she averaged 78.38 over her final three tournaments.  Senior Audrey Pulliam (Little Rock, Ark.) is batting cleanup for W&M in the fourth spot.  Pulliam set her career-lows for 18-, 36-, and 54-holes last year as a junior.  Anchoring the line-up is graduate student Allison Olberding (West Des Moines, Iowa) after averaging 75.88 strokes per round in 2019-20, the eighth-best single-season ever at W&M.  Olberding ranks fourth all-time among Tribe players with a 77.04 career average.

Playing as individuals on Sunday will be senior Madison Elliott (Little River, S.C.) and redshirt-junior transfer Stefanie Guizar Diaz (Clearwater, Fla.).  Elliott made the CAA Championships squad for W&M in each of her first two seasons, and has an 81.26 career average.  Guizar Diaz transferred to W&M from Wingate, where she carried a 79.93 average in two seasons.

Scouting the Spiders
Richmond will be bringing eight players to the course, including junior Naomi Mitchell who ranks seventh in school history with a 78.09 career average.  In 2019-20, the Spiders had two top-five finishes, including at the Kingsmill Intercollegiate in September of 2019.