The Sacramento State women’s golf team is on a much-needed monthlong break as they prepare for the Cal Poly Lamkin Grip Invitational Nov. 1 in Arroyo Grande.

Junior Julie Shutler said the break has helped the team by allowing them time to fix the mechanical problems they might not otherwise get to iron out if they were competing.

“The season has been tough so far because we hit a rough patch in the beginning. We had three tournaments in a row, without any practice time in between,” Shutler said. “Personally, I wasn’t hitting the ball very well and it kept getting worse with each tournament. With a month off from tournament play, we have had time get our games back and I feel we will come back stronger after the rough start that we had.”

At the Chip-N Club Invitational Sept. 13 in Lincoln, Neb., Sac State finished 14th out of 15 teams with a team score of 633 in the weather-shortened two-day tournament.

The Hornets on Sept. 20 went into Pullman, Wash., for the Cougar Cup. Out of 12 teams entered, Sac State finished in 10th place with a score of 961 in three days of play.

Finally, in the Golfweek Conference Challenge Sept. 26 in Vail, Colo., the Hornets finished 17th out of 18 teams in the tournament. Sac State posted a score of 963 for the three-day tournament.

Head coach David Sutherland said spectators should not get caught up in the early results as there is a bigger prize at the end of the season.

“Golf is a sport where it is very different than most other sports on campus. For the reason that a person can’t really overreact to the highs and the lows of the sport,” Sutherland said. “I still feel like we have a very competitive team. I feel we are one of the teams to beat when it comes time for the conference championship in the spring.”

Last year, the Hornets were led by senior captain Brooke Green. Green helped the team overcome a seven-stroke deficit on the final day of the Big Sky conference championship at the Ocotillo Golf Resort in Chandler, Ariz. Sac State earned a second-place finish, falling just two strokes behind champion Portland State University.

Sutherland said the team will need to rely on returning golfers to lead them into conference play.

“We lost two really reliable seniors from last year’s team. It is almost impossible to replace them skill-wise,” Sutherland said. “But we do have three women on our team that have been all-conference players and a sophomore who was possibly one of the top three or four freshmen golfers in the conference last year.”

Sutherland said the two players to watch in the 2010-11 season are senior Samantha Saffold and junior Julie Shutler. Both have earned all-conference honors during their time at Sac State.

As this year’s team captain, Saffold said the team needs to grow with each tournament going into the conference championship at the end of the season.

“We need to develop more as the season goes on. We haven’t started out well,” Saffold said. “But I do feel we are progressing as a team. And we really want to win conference and if we start to do well, that will help our confidence and allow us to play much better.”

Saffold said junior Julie Shutler is a player on the team with the potential to make a big impact for the team late in the season.

“Julie definitely has the ability to stand out. She had the lowest scoring average out of everyone on the team,” Saffold said. “She has a great personality, firm in her decision-making process and I feel that she will make a great team captain come next season.”

Shutler was the lone Hornet to earn All-Conference honors for the 2009-10 season. She also set a school record for the lowest single-season scoring average with 76.31 strokes in 26 rounds of golf.

Shutler said with the golf team’s history and with potential prospects to come, other schools should look to them to be moving into the elite ranks.

“In the past few years, we have really done some great things on the golf course. We have been constantly improving and some that is from the players that the coaches have been able to recruit,” she said. “I feel we are going to be a team to watch for the rest of this season and into the future. We have some great players that will be coming in next school year and other teams will have pay attention to us.”

Saffold said the team’s track record in tournaments will speak for itself as they are in contention when it counts.

“We have proven that we are a great team time and again. Last year we were two strokes back from winning the whole thing,” she said. “We may not be leading the tournament the first day or even the second day, but we have proven that we can contend in the last round. So every team should be wary of us because we are bound to win the championship at some point, I just hope it is this year.”

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]