Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 16, 1990 TAG: 9006160257
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Worried about making the University of Arizona traveling team.
"I am scared," said Slaughter, a sophomore from Floyd. "If I don't play well in qualifying next year, I'm not going to travel and that really would be embarrassing for the NCAA champion."
There is little chance that Slaughter will get a swelled head, considering she missed three tournaments in March and had to reclaim her spot on the team in qualifying.
"I can't play well in qualifying," Slaughter said during a trip to the Virginia Tech golf course for a session with her pro, Jay Hardwick. "The coach [Kim Haddow] knows that. Some people go out in a practice round and tear it up. I don't get nervous. I don't feel anything."
Something different happens in the bigger tournaments.
"Do I get nervous?" Slaughter said in response to a question. "Sure, I love it. I remember before last year's [NCAA Tournament] my stomach was churning and I told my mother, `I thought I'd grow out of this. Will I ever grow out of this?'
"I'm two different golfers. What I've got to do is program myself to think that a qualifying round is a big deal."
At least Slaughter realizes the NCAA Tournament is a big deal. As a freshman, she came from seven shots back after 54 holes to finish second. This year, she won a sudden-death playoff with Michiko Hattori of Texas to take the individual championship.
Slaughter had trailed Arizona State star Brandie Burton by one shot going into the final round at the Arthur Hills Golf Course in Hilton Head, S.C.
"Everybody felt I was out of it after No. 10," said Slaughter, who had a double-bogey on the hole. "I didn't make any birdies coming down the stretch, but I was making pars where everybody else was making bogey.
"I think the one area where I impressed myself was my mental game. I have never used my notes so much. I would calculate the wind. I would make sure to hit my approach shots to the [correct] part of the green and below the hole."
The one exception was the first extra hole.
"I hit a big drive, but when I reached for my notes, they weren't there. I had left them on the scorer's table," she said. "I went up to one of the officials to ask if I could send somebody for them, but I couldn't.
"I was kind of upset, but fortunately I saw a sprinkler head that was 137 yards from the green. I had been in almost that exact spot that morning and I hit two of my best shots of the tournament. I didn't even watch it."
Slaughter's 8-iron shot came to rest two feet from the hole and she tapped in for the winning birdie.
"There were a lot of things going through my mind," she said. "I knew the NCAA champion would make All-American and that was my only chance of making the team. I knew it meant another chance to travel overseas. And I felt I had something to prove, that I wasn't a fluke when I finished second."
Slaughter had shown signs of life when she finished 21st in a strong field in the Pacific 10 Conference Tournament, but that hardly would have cast her as a favorite for the NCAA Tournament.
"I played well at the Arizona State tournament, which determined whether I played in the Pac-10 and NCAAs," she said. "I didn't have time to worry about the tournaments because I was worried about making the traveling team.
"After school was over, I practiced all day every day. I didn't have to worry about class and I was getting plenty of sleep. When I wasn't traveling, it wasn't that I was playing poorly. I just had one bad tournament and dug a hole for myself."
Hardwick, who coaches the men's team at Virginia Tech, credits Slaughter for her understanding of the golf swing.
"I think that's the biggest difference in her game," Hardwick said. "She has an excellent grasp of the golf swing. I think she was almost too dependent on me before she went away to school."
Slaughter was the lone bright spot for Arizona, once ranked No. 3, in the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats trailed by seven shots going into the final round but fell from second to seventh as Slaughter's teammates shot 78, 82, 84 and 87.
"The humidity was unbelievable," Slaughter said. "I had heard the ASU [Arizona State] girls talking about it earlier in the week. Of course, we're used to dry heat in the desert. I noticed the humidity, too, but I just told myself not to let it get to me."
Although she calls home every day during some stretches, Slaughter has become acclimated to the Southwest and has not become homesick, even during the tough times.
"It's a totally different world, though," she said. "We're lucky because the golf course is where all the grass is."
When she returned to Tucson, Ariz., after winning the NCAA title, Slaughter packed her car for her semiannual cross-country trip. She plans to try to qualify for several national events, but she will remain on the East Coast for the most part and will enter the Virginia Women's Stroke-Play Championship, as well as the Virginia Women's Amateur in Hot Springs.
Slaughter was a semifinalist in the women's Trans National in 1988, but it seems the NCAA Tournament has become her private domain.
"I guess if there was any tournament to pick," she said, "that would be the one."
by CNB