NCAA Championship NCAA Women's Golf - Printable Version
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RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-18-2018
Like lots of teams--including #1 Alabama--the front nine brutalized us. Over the last 10 holes, however, only Arizona (=1) has scored lower than our +5. #1 Alabama has gone +12 over that stretch, #3 Arkansas +14, #2 UCLA +11, and #10 ASU #18.
The wildest first day I can recall.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Spiny_Norman - 05-18-2018
+19 on the front. +1 on the back. Pretty stark contrast. Every team has struggled on the front 9, but none more so than Stanford. Maybe it just took them longer to adjust to the course conditions. Just brutal when your #1 player Andrea Lee cannot make a single birdie until the final hole. She is in good company. Maria Fassi from Arkansas, the #1 ranked college player, will not break 80 today.
Team better get some rest and reset their mental state. They will be back on the golf course in the first wave tomorrow morning.
I'll make one other observation - pace of play. It is taking forever to complete the rounds, probably because of the difficulty of the course. Looks to me like 5 1/2 hour rounds. Probably means a lot of waiting around on the course. I cannot speak for the players, but I know that I can get impatient when I have to wait on every shot. It definitely can affect your game if you let it.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - slide - 05-18-2018
9 birdies and 9 doubles or worse. not sure if I've ever seen that from a ranked team.
good news is Stanford looks to be only 7 back from making match play.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - oldalum - 05-18-2018
We finish at +20, only about 7 shots away from the match-play cut-line of 8 teams, with 3 rounds to go. So, considering how disastrous our front nine was relative to our prime competitors, we are really not in a bad position. We just have to play consistently well, can't afford any more bad stretches like the front nine today.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-18-2018
Fabulous rebound by Stanford. The low team--tied with Arizona and SC--over the last 11 holes.
Lee and Valenzuela played even par over their liast 12, Aubert was plus one over her last 14.
That was impressive.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - 2006alum - 05-18-2018
Let's hope they carry this momentum into tomorrow!
Didn't Spiny say the winds become a problem in the afternoon? Maybe it's a blessing in disguise to start poorly and get the earlier tee times? Starting at noon if the course plays 5.5 hours means you're not finishing up until dinner time, which basically means you never get a mental break.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Spiny_Norman - 05-18-2018
An example of what makes the golf course so tough. Look how deep the rough is -
https://twitter.com/GolfweekRingler/status/997628669999886337
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Spiny_Norman - 05-18-2018
Stanford tees off on Saturday starting at 7:30 am local time, 5:30 am pacific on the 10th hole.
The conditions should be better in the morning than the afternoon. The wind is usually calmer (although a front is passing through tonight). The greens will have just been mowed. And the players will not spend their entire round in the heat of the day. Forecast high tomorrow is 93 (that's degrees, not golf shots).
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-19-2018
Good fortune: We go out first, with temperature just over 70 and winds at eight mph.
The afternoon groups will have to deal with heat (90-92 degrees), dried-out greens that are harder to hold. harder greens, and winds twice as strong--which will dry out the greens even more.
Afternoon foursomes, scores coming in (Stanford's final 11), all plus:
Stanford 4
USC 4
UCLA 5
Arizona 9
Northwestern 9
Duke 9
Alabama 11
Florida 15
Arkansas 17
Furman 20
Texas 20
ASU 23
A key here is to deal with/survive the first six holes:
Average score:
Holes 1-6: +2.59
Holes 7-18: +2.51
3, 4, 5 and 6 are especially wicked: +2.24.
Go Cardinal!
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - CornFed - 05-19-2018
(05-18-2018, 11:45 AM)slide Wrote:In this vein, it should be noted that our own home course starts with a par 5.(05-18-2018, 10:26 AM)Hulk01 Wrote: [quote="Spiny_Norman" pid='224559' dateline='1526660264']
I just realized this. The first hole is a par five.
How many well-regarded courses start with a par-five? Riviera and. . . ?
Offends my perhaps old-fashioned sensibility. And reminds me, again, why I don't like Fazio's courses.
par 5 openers
classic courses: East Lake (9s have been flipped), LA North and Riviera (3 really good tracks)
others: Barnbougle, Copperhead, Spyglass, Doonberg (tough, tough, meh, a Norman course - eventually he'll get one right, may be?)
tough start for Stanford: 6 pars, 5 bogeys and 2 doubles.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-19-2018
Lance Ringler, the favored source on college golf, is saying this course is simply too hard for the women.
The big issue is with the rough, which has been grown out for the men's event. It takes exceptional strength to hack out of it. Often, it appears from the reports, women aren't try to advance the ball but are hitting wedges laterially, back on the fairway--effectively treating a drive into the rough as a one-stroke penalty.
I don't think college golf wants its top 24 teams playing to an average per player of 77.1 strokes. That's a drop score, not an ideal team average.
Bring out the three woods and even utility clubs off the tees. There are some teams that simply are not recruited to play this kind of course.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - oldalum - 05-19-2018
This may account for why Aubert tied for our low score, when she has usually been the high one: she usually hits short and straight, which on most courses means she has longer-than-typical approach shots and can't take as much advantage of the par 5s, but on this course maybe this has allowed her to avoid the rough and evened things out more. Would have been nice to get more advanced metrics to verify this. Means she will be even tougher in match play than anticipated if (when) we get there.
After 7 holes Lee is -1!! And we are +1 overall, compared with +3 for Duke and +4 for U.SC.
But UCLA on the front nine is -5 at the moment, with 4 birdies and 2 bogeys on holes 3-6.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - slide - 05-19-2018
somewhat of a move up today (almost thru 9). now 6 shots out of 8th. Even for the day and on the back side. UCLA making the biggest move -- they are -5 under and almost finished with the harder front side. 3 players under par.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - 2006alum - 05-19-2018
Three birdies on the last hole helped salvage our day and leave us +2 for the day. Not great, but a vast improvement compared to day one. We shave off 18 strokes from yesterday. Unfortunately, most other teams seem to be shaving off 5 to 10 as well, so everyone seems to be improving - save for USC and Duke, our pairs for the day.
Speaking of which, do we know how they assign the order of the tee times? I had thought it was adjusted so the top teams went last and the worst teams went off first, but Alabama and UCLA, among the tournament leaders, were off in the first group today. Given that the course plays significantly worse as the day wears on, it would seem that getting off in one of the earlier groups would hold a major advantage - and, indeed, UCLA and Alabama currently sit nos. 1 and 2 overall...
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-19-2018
We were almost certain to lose strokes to par on our 14th and 15th holes. They're the toughest back-to-backs on the course. You want to avoid casualties on that hole and pick up at least a stroke on 18, the third "easiest" hole.
We scored well. Third best round of the day, only UCLA and Alabama broke par, six of the twelve teams that went out early are in double figures over par. We should be in 8th-11th at day's end and in great shape to easily make the 15 team cut. We keep playing this and only UCLA has a clear edge. Thanks to Bethany Wu's reacquaintance with pars and birdies, the Bruins are looking scary.
Of the afternoon group just out, Kent State is a legit team and has been here before--last year. But all of these afternoon teams are going to come back to us and several will quickly disappear behind us on the leader board.
Last 29 holes (all plus score unless indicated)
3 UCLA -4
5 Stanford 6
1 Alabama 9
13 Northwestern 13
9 Arizona 13
6 USC 14
4 Duke 19
7 Furman 24
2 Arkansas 29
10 ASU 32
12 Florida 32
8 Texas 32
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - BostonCard - 05-19-2018
(05-19-2018, 11:44 AM)2006alum Wrote: Three birdies on the last hole helped salvage our day and leave us +2 for the day. Not great, but a vast improvement compared to day one. We shave off 18 strokes from yesterday. Unfortunately, most other teams seem to be shaving off 5 to 10 as well, so everyone seems to be improving - save for USC and Duke, our pairs for the day.
Speaking of which, do we know how they assign the order of the tee times? I had thought it was adjusted so the top teams went last and the worst teams went off first, but Alabama and UCLA, among the tournament leaders, were off in the first group today. Given that the course plays significantly worse as the day wears on, it would seem that getting off in one of the earlier groups would hold a major advantage - and, indeed, UCLA and Alabama currently sit nos. 1 and 2 overall...
I think that's a bit harsh. Yes, we could have done better, but we are sitting at 13th, 3 strokes up on the cut line, and 5 back from qualifying for match play (we started 7 back), and as more teams accumulate strokes above par, our relative position should improve. UCLA finished an unbelievable -9; Alabama -2, and every other team is above par.
BC
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - 2006alum - 05-19-2018
Sorry, I certainly didn't mean to be harsh or overly negative - I was just looking at how the top teams finished today, and their scores were 279 (UCLA) and 286 (Bama). By comparison, our 291 is notably worse, especially given that we were 308 after day one and they were in the low 290s. You're right that we just need to make the cut, and that match play is a different dynamic than stroke play, but I'm also looking at how the top 4 teams are performing, because those are the ones we should be keeping up with as the no. 5 team. It's pretty clear that UCLA and Bama will be exceptionally tough matches, and just squeaking past the cut line means we'd likely end up playing one of them in the quarterfinals.
And notably, both USC and Duke ended up at 298, so as I said, we did better than some of the other top teams. Pardon my desire for us to be number one at all times. Spoiled Stanford fan who can reasonably expect that, I suppose. :D
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - Hulk01 - 05-19-2018
It must go without saying that if our first seven holes yesterday were not an aberration, we aren't going to win this championship.
But assuming we'e gotten back on the tracks, our scores are misleading for match play purposes.
Of our total -16 over the last 27 holes, Liu accounts for 12. But she can only lose once at match play. The other four can get us three wins, and three of them--Lee, Valenzuela, and Aubert--have been through all of this before, the first two last year and Aubert all three years of her career.
And I don't trust UCLA to play when the heat goes on. They're cruising right now, but the cruises end in match play. They're still, with Alabama, the best bet to win, but we all know that best bets aren't great bets in NCAA women's match play golf.
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - oldalum - 05-19-2018
(05-19-2018, 01:21 PM)Hulk01 Wrote: best bets aren't great bets in NCAA women's match play golf.In the three years of match play, the #1 and #2 seeded teams have never won the championship. We were seeded fourth in match play when we won, and ASU was seeded third when they won. I think Washington was seeded fourth when they won. So things are looking bad for UCLA and Alabama!
RE: NCAA Women's Golf - BostonCard - 05-19-2018
Our +3 is tied for third best on the day and we have moved up to 9th, 7 spots better than the start of the day. We are now 8 shots clear of the cut line and we have two rounds to make it up 3 shots on duke or Florida State to advance to match play.
And then everyone starts with a blank slate, so UCLA running away with it means nothing.
All in all can’t complain about the day. But gotta continue the positive momentum.
BC