WACO, Texas -- Baylor's No. 14-nationally ranked women's golf team opens the 2015-16 season at the Mason Rudolph Championship, which runs Friday through Sunday at the par-72, 6,276-yard course at the Vanderbilt Legends Club in Franklin, Tenn.

The Lady Bears return four of five players who competed to the NCAA National Championship last season, where the team advanced to match play and won its quarterfinal and semifinal matches before falling on the first playoff hole in the national title match against Stanford.

The 17-team tournament field features Alabama, Auburn, Baylor, Central Florida, Georgia, GRU Augusta, Houston, Louisville, LSU, Michigan State, Middle Tennessee State, Northwestern, South Carolina, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Virginia and Yale.

Baylor's lineup for the opening tournament features sophomore Giovana Maymon, senior Laura Lonardi, sophomore Dylan Kim, junior Maggie Beth Byers and junior Louise Gateau-Chovelon.

Gateau-Chovelon will be first off the tee at 8 a.m. CT, and she'll be followed in nine-minute intervals by Byers, Kim, Lonardi and Maymon, respectively. Live scoring is available at www.birdiefire.com.

For the first time in his five years at Baylor, women's golf coach Jay Goble won't have All-American Hayley Davis in his lineup.

But with four of the top five players returning, along with a pair of experienced juniors, Goble believes the 2015-16 team can be even better than last year's group that won the program's first Big 12 championship and finished as the runner-up at the NCAA Championships.

"Hayley Davis was the best player we've ever had, so far," Goble said of Davis, who stayed on as a student assistant while trying to earn her LGPA Tour card. "Hayley's an unbelievable player, an unbelievable teammate, and she's going to be missed in the lineup, without a doubt. But I think having a few other players step up a little bit, we've got a chance to be right back in the same position we were in last year."

Leading the returners is sophomore Dylan Kim, a second-team All-American who posted four top-10 finishes and a 73.08-stroke average as an early-enrollee freshman last spring. She was also undefeated in three matches at the NCAA Championships, beating Stanford's Lauren Kim, 3-and-1, in the final.

"There's no pressure to try to repeat anything," said Kim, who qualified for the U.S. Women's Open this summer. "I just keep doing what I'm doing, because I feel like I did improve a lot. Just keep improving and stay positive."

Also back from the NCAA Championships lineup are senior Laura Lonardi and sophomores Giovana Maymon and Lauren Whyte. Lonardi and Maymon both won two of their three matches at the NCAA Championships, while Whyte defeated Duke's Lisa Maguire on the sixth hole of a playoff to send the Bears into the final with a 3-2 upset of the Blue Devils.

"Last year definitely put Baylor on the map a bit," Whyte said, "so I think we're all ready to go out and prove to everyone that it wasn't just a one-year thing and we are a good team and we're here to compete."

Lonardi said last year's loss to Stanford in the championship match is a "great motivation for all of us."

"We were really close, and I think it made us realize how good we are and how well we can do," she said. "We're just working every day to get back there this year. . . . Yes, it stings, but it's a great motivation because you know you want to be in that position again."

Coming off an injury that sidelined her for most of the summer, Whyte isn't in the lineup for the season-opening Mason Rudolph Championship that begins Friday at Vanderbilt Legends Golf Club in Franklin, Tenn. Juniors Maggie Beth Byers and Louise Gateau-Chovelon will join Kim, Lonardi and Maymon in the lineup for this week's tournament.

The strong 17-team field includes eight of the top 30 from Golfweek's preseason top 30: No. 8 Alabama, No. 10 South Carolina, No. 12 Northwestern, No. 14 Baylor, No. 16 LSU, No. 17 Virginia, No. 27 Georgia and 28th-ranked Vanderbilt. Also in the field are Auburn, Augusta State, Central Florida, Houston, Louisville, Michigan State, Middle Tennessee, Tulane and Yale.

"The fall season, we're just trying to go out and get some tournament experience under our belt," Goble said. "The thing that I try to instill in my team is that if we're getting better every day, once we get to postseason we're going to be in a good place. This week, we're going to try our best and compete and learn from our experiences, good and bad, and get ready for the next event after this."

Baylor's fall tournament schedule also includes the Tar Heel Invitational Oct. 9-11 in Chapel Hill, N.C., the Alamo Invitational Oct. 25-27 in San Antonio, Texas, and the East Lake Cup Nov. 2-3 in Atlanta, Ga., a match-play tournament that pits last year's semifinalists (Baylor, Stanford, Duke and USC) in an event that will be broadcast by the Golf Channel.

"That's awesome to be mentioned in the same company of those three schools and get to play in an event like that," Goble said. "My team really enjoys match play. They're really extreme competitors. So, for them to get a chance to go one-on-one against the best players in the country, is really fun. I'm not predicting how we're going to do, but I think it's going to be a good time."

Baylor opens up the spring as defending champions at the Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge Feb. 7-9 in Palos Verdes, Calif., followed by the Hurricane Invitational Feb. 29-March 2 in Miami, Fla., the Wildcat Invitational March 14-15 in Tucson, Ariz., the Dallas Athletic Club Invitational April 1-2 in Dallas, Texas, and the Ping ASU Invitational in Tempe, Ariz.

The Big 12 Championship returns to The Dominion Country Club April 22-24 in San Antonio, Texas, with the NCAA regional tournaments held May 5-7 and the NCAA Championships May 20-25 in Eugene, Ore.