The men and women’s golf teams both finished up their fall seasons this week, with the women placing third at the Rainbow Wahine Invitational on Wednesday while the men came home in sixth place at the Gifford Collegiate Golf Championship earlier in the day.
There were plenty of bright spots for the Cardinal on both squads — freshman Patrick Rodgers solidified his spot as the team’s No. 1 with his fourth consecutive top-10 finish at the Gifford, while Sally Watson and Kristina Wong both were in the hunt in Hawaii and finished in the top-10.
But there were just as many issues of consistency for Stanford.
Coming into the Gifford, held right down the road at CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, Calif., the men’s team was ranked third in the country behind No. 2 Oregon and No. 1 Texas. But the Card struggled from the outset, turning in a first-round 371 that left the team in eighth place, a whopping 26 strokes behind USC for the lead.
Coach Conrad Ray attributed some of that deficit to the disadvantage the Cardinal had in starting play on the back nine holes of the course, which Ray said were tougher to ease into.
“Conditions were pretty tough all week, the rough was thick and the greens were fast,” he said. “And we didn’t have our best stuff. Playing six guys and counting five scores, we battled that fourth and fifth spot a little bit and the fifth score all week was a little bit high. But hats off to USC for taking command.”
The Trojans came out firing at pins from the first tee, shooting a first-round 345 led by senior Steve Lim’s 66. But even with their low scores, they faced some serious competition from UCLA and sophomore star Patrick Cantlay. Last year’s Division I Player of the Year and a First Team All-American shot a first-round 63 to pace the field.
From there, it was pretty much a two-man (and two-team) race with Lim and Cantlay outpacing Oregon’s Eugene Wong slightly. Lim proved to be slightly more consistent, taking the title after three rounds in the 60s.
Rodgers and sophomore Cameron Wilson, who shot a final-round 69 to tie for 13th at the Gifford, have both played very well in the fall. And junior Andrew Yun has been right up there with Rodgers in several events, needing to finish with better closing rounds to move up the leaderboard.
But as Ray pointed out, the team has yet to find a solid back-end to the lineup, and while it has not been due to poor play by any one player, the cumulative effort hasn’t been quite up to the level Ray expects from one of the favorites to win the Pac-12 title.
“The team results have been kind of a mixed bag,” Ray said. “The win [in September at the Fighting Illini Invitational] in Chicago was one of more impressive victories I’ve had as a coach here. Now, obviously the last couple weeks have been a little off-par, and we want more contribution from the fourth and fifth spots. But that’s the beauty of team golf — we just need a couple of guys to step up.”
The women’s team faces many of the same problems, although signs of improvement were everywhere in Hawaii. Stanford finished at 19-over par, 34 strokes behind UCLA, but juniors Kristina Wong and Sally Watson finished in the top seven and the Cardinal did not even have the services of freshman Mariko Tumangan, who has emerged as one of the top players on the team.
If Watson, who won the first tournament of the season at the Washington State Cougar Cup, Wong and Tumangan can continue to perform at a high level, Stanford will have a chance to compete for the conference crown. But it won’t be easy — the No. 1 Bruins women’s team is even more formidable than its male counterpart and features four players inside the top 15 individually.
But both Stanford teams will have to wait to make their moves on the course, as the Cardinal takes a break from competition until tournament play for both squads resumes in February.