For the Stanford women’s golf team, the Pac-12 Championship has been no good indicator of where the team has stood over the last two seasons.
Just look at 2014, when the Cardinal won the Pac-12 title but finished a meager 18th out of 24 teams in stroke play at the NCAA Championships. Or look at something like last year (which the team would prefer), when the Cardinal finished seventh at Pac-12s before winning the national title a few weeks later.
The No. 6 Cardinal are coming off of their third meet victory of the season after they beat Oregon by 13 strokes at the Silverado Showdown in Napa, California two weeks ago and will shuffle their lineup a bit for the Pac-12s, with freshman Sierra Kersten set to take junior Quirine Eijkenboom’s place in the fifth spot of the lineup. Kersten will join Stanford’s usual top four of senior Lauren Kim, senior Mariah Stackhouse, sophomore Shannon Aubert and junior Casey Danielson.
Kersten, a Washington native, finished 5-over and tied for 18th individually at the Silverado Showdown in a non-scoring performance, while Eijkenboom went 16-over in the Cardinal’s No. 5 spot, likely contributing to the lineup change. Kersten will be making just her third individual appearance of the season.
The meet will take place over three days at the Ruby Hill Golf Club in Pleasanton, California, with the field highlighted by No. 1 UCLA and No. 2 USC. No. 6 Stanford will be the third seed at the tournament, which will also include a packed field of No. 10 Arizona State, No. 12 Arizona, No. 13 Washington, No. 15 Cal, No. 21 Oregon and No. 25 Colorado among the 11 competing teams.
Stanford will tee off on Hole 10 with No. 8 seed Oregon and No. 10 seed Oregon State at 9:40 a.m. today. Live stats will be available for the tournament at golfstatresults.com and the final day of the meet will be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.
Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.