Third-seeded UCLA claimed the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Championships by three strokes over defending national champion Stanford as the Pacific 12 Conference put five teams into match play that will determine the title at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore.
The Bruins, coached by Carrie Forsyth, posted a score of 286-291-285-282–1144, 8-under, while the Cardinal rallied to finish at 295-283-290-279–1147, followed by USC at 289-280-291-290–1150 and Washington at 289-285-292-286–1152.
“Obviously you aren’t the champion anymore after four rounds of stroke play, but you still feel really good about how you’re playing,” said Forsyth, who will try to guide UCLA to its third national title in her 17 seasons as coach, the other two when stroke play determined the champion. “We played better than what we shot today.”
Virginia was fifth at 293-294-286-282–1155, followed by Duke at 299-283-280-296–1158, while host Oregon finished at 297-282-291-296–1166 to tie for seventh with South Carolina, which wound up at 293-289-290-290–1162.
In the match play quarterfinals, UCLA will face Oregon, Stanford will play South Carolina, USC goes against Duke and Washington meets Virginia.
Virginia Elena Carter of Duke, a freshman from Italy, captured the NCAA individual title with a record score of 69-68-66-69–272, while Haley Moore of Arizona shot 68-70-74-68–280 to tie for second with Dewi Weber of Miami at 69-66-74-71–280.
Cheyenne Knight of Alabama totaled 69-69-71-73–282 to tie for fourth with Anna Newell of Tennessee, who carded a score of 69-67-75-71–282, while Lilia Vu of UCLA wound up at 73-72-71-67–283 to tie for sixth with Casey Danielson of Stanford, who finished 71-70-74-68–283, and Jennifer Kupcho of Wake Forest, who came in at 69-73-67-74–283.
Bronte Law of UCLA was ninth at 71-72-69-72–284 and Tiffany Chin of USC rounded out the top 10 at 71-71-74-70–286.
Shannon Aubert of Stanford shot 74-72-72-69–287 to finish in a tie for 11th that included Louise Ridderstrom of UCLA, who totaled 69-73-73-72–287.
Lauren Kim of Stanford posted a score of 74-72-74-70–290 to wind up in a tie for 27th that included Karen Chung of USC, who totaled 73-69-74-74–290, Mariah Stackhouse of Stanford, who finished at 79-69-70-72–290, and Bethany Wu of UCLA, who came in at 73-74-72-71–290.
