Stanford women’s golf looks to end an up-and-down season with a strong performance in its NCAA Regional at the Entrada Country Club in St. George, Utah. The top six teams and top three individuals in each regional will advance to the NCAA Championships, which take place May 22-27.
The Cardinal, ranked fourth of the 18 teams in the regional, hope to erase memories of a disappointing seventh place finish in the Pac-12 Championships. After winning the conference title last season, No. 19 Stanford got off to a hot start, recording a 2-over 286 on the first day, putting them in second place. However, a second-day 303 derailed the Cardinal, who finished 25 strokes behind the champions, No. 6 Arizona.
While the Cardinal had a rough performance at the conference championships, junior Lauren Kim had one of her better tournaments of the season, finishing seventh overall at two under par. After posting 72 in the first two rounds, the senior caught fire on the final day of the tournament, recording four birdies and an eagle en route to a 4-under 67. A top-10 finish in the Pac-12, which features nine of the top 25 golfers in the country, bodes well for Kim’s chances to advance through the regional.
In order for the Cardinal to achieve that same success, it must get solid performances across the board. The team scoring format, in which the team’s four best scores are added up to get the total score, favors consistency from top to bottom. Take Washington, the third-place finisher at the Pac-12 Championships, for example. The Huskies’ lowest-scoring individual took tenth place, but they never recorded a score higher than 75. While great individual rounds can certainly help a team, the winning teams tend to have solid rounds from everyone.
This season, only Kim has shown the round-to-round consistency needed to advance and succeed in the playoffs. However, the Cardinal’s remaining golfers certainly have the ability to string good scores together and help the team advance. Junior Mariah Stackhouse, who along with Kim was named to the First Team All Pac-12, is as talented as any golfer in the country but has regressed slightly from her other-worldly sophomore season. If Stackhouse can recapture the magic of last year, in which she recorded nine top-10 finishes, nearly won the NCAA Regionals and received First Team All-American honors, the Cardinal can be serious players at and beyond Regionals.
Like Stackhouse, Stanford’s remaining three golfers have had inconsistent performances punctuated by occasional brilliance. Sophomores Casey Danielson and Quirine Eijkenboom have shown enough promise to regularly break into the starting lineup for the Cardinal, but tend to mix solid rounds with frustrating ones. Freshman Shannon Aubert has often lived up to her billing as a top recruit, and earlier this year was ranked the No. 65 golfer in the NCAA on the strength of two dazzling rounds of 67 and 64.
However, as the Pac-12 Championships showed, the Cardinal do lack brilliance. If they make the top six and advance to the NCAA Championships, it will take something that has not happened all season: consistent play from all five golfers.
Contact Sanjay Srinivas at ssri16 ‘at’ stanford.edu.