Five player, 18 hole match play and sheer luck have been sleeping together for centuries.
It is not a question of Walker getting these Stanford women fully prepared. These women have been playing high level, international tournament golf since fifth grade.
USC, the nation's second best team, is 7.5 strokes per round inferior to Stanford. And just this past week, USC "beat" Stanford in round two of The Bruin Wave--and otherwise got humiliated..
My antagonism to 18 hole match play, to decide a national championship, goes back to the Morikawa Cal team that "lost" the NCAA championship, despite being clearly superior. AndI I have always been amused that Wu and Salinda managed to almost single-handedly win Stanford a natty, despite us not being the nation's best team that year by any other reasonable measure.
And finally, my disdain comes from experience: In my junior year, I tied the state's third best player in match play. I was a +7; he was scratch. But I only had to get through 18 holes with him, and a wind sent his second shot on the par five 18th two yards into OB. Boom, even!
He would have beat me 3 and 2 on the back, if I played pretty well.
The NCAA and The Golf Channel have made NCAA golf more telegenic by making it less of a test of excellence and more of a dice roll. I get it. I just don't take the result very seriously. I suspect Colin Morikawa struggles with it, too.
It is not a question of Walker getting these Stanford women fully prepared. These women have been playing high level, international tournament golf since fifth grade.
USC, the nation's second best team, is 7.5 strokes per round inferior to Stanford. And just this past week, USC "beat" Stanford in round two of The Bruin Wave--and otherwise got humiliated..
My antagonism to 18 hole match play, to decide a national championship, goes back to the Morikawa Cal team that "lost" the NCAA championship, despite being clearly superior. AndI I have always been amused that Wu and Salinda managed to almost single-handedly win Stanford a natty, despite us not being the nation's best team that year by any other reasonable measure.
And finally, my disdain comes from experience: In my junior year, I tied the state's third best player in match play. I was a +7; he was scratch. But I only had to get through 18 holes with him, and a wind sent his second shot on the par five 18th two yards into OB. Boom, even!
He would have beat me 3 and 2 on the back, if I played pretty well.
The NCAA and The Golf Channel have made NCAA golf more telegenic by making it less of a test of excellence and more of a dice roll. I get it. I just don't take the result very seriously. I suspect Colin Morikawa struggles with it, too.