DATE: Friday, July 4, 1997                  TAG: 9707020207

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 14   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DOUG DOUGHTY, LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE 

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

EX-WILDCAT GOLFER ROBERSON WINS WOMEN'S STROKE-PLAY TITLE

KARLA ROBERSON has been coming to Roanoke Country Club for years and now she knows what she's been doing wrong.

She's been playing the holes in the wrong order.

Roberson improved her score every day, finishing with an even-par 72 last Thursday to win the Virginias Women's Stroke-Play Championship.

Roberson, a 21-year-old college student from Chesapeake, had a 54-hole total of 223. Lee Shirley from Roanoke was second at 226.

``It's the biggest thing I've won,'' said Roberson, who finished second to Sherry Zaleski in last year's stroke-play championship and won the state Group AAA team title with Great Bridge High in 1993.

Roberson said she played in the Scott Robertson Memorial Tournament, also played at Roanoke Country Club, five times, but always over the Crabapple and Redbud courses, generally considered the middle and back nines in Roanoke's 27-hole layout.

For the stroke-play tournament, the women played the ``front'' or Dogwood Nine instead of the Crabapple Nine, which is the shortest of Roanoke's three tracks.

``I had played only one practice round over the Dogwood Nine,'' said Roberson, who will be a senior at Longwood College in the fall. ``But I had a lot of memories from the rest of the course.''

Roberson trailed Chris Epperly by two shots going into the final round and didn't take the lead until she birdied the ninth hole, a 290-yard par-4.

That moved Roberson into a tie with Shirley, who bogeyed No. 9, and she took command for good with a birdie-2 at No. 11. That stretched her lead to three shots over Shirley and she held on from there.

The victory continued what has been an outstanding year for Roberson. In May, she finished eighth at the NCAA Division II/III tournament to earn National Golf Coaches Association Division II/III All-America honorable mention. Roberson shot 82-83-79-83-327 at the par-73 El Campeon course in Orlando. Zoe Grimbeck of Lynn (Fla.) University won the title by shooting 315.

Roberson, who has advanced to the national tournament in each of the three seasons she has played at Longwood, was named MVP of the golf team for the second consecutive year. She averaged 82.2 strokes per round this season. Roberson was also one of 56 Longwood athletes named to the school's Student-Athlete Honor Roll. To qualify for the honor, a student must maintain at least a 3.0 GPA. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Karla Roberson, a rising senior at Longwood College, was the team's

MVP and on the Student-Athlete Honor Roll.

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