The defending champion is out of this U.S. Ladies’s Novice.
Auburn grad Megan Schofill, final 12 months’s champion at Bel-Air Nation Membership, led 2 up with six holes to play Wednesday at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma. However Princeton’s Catherine Rao gained every of the subsequent 4 holes, going eagle-birdie-birdie-birdie to flip the match on Schofill and advance to Thursday’s Spherical of 32 with a 2-and-1 victory.
“It does make it somewhat bit sweeter,” Rao mentioned of knocking off the defending champ, “however on the finish of the day I’m out right here, and I feel the largest factor that I’ve discovered in taking part in U.S. Novice is I’m out right here to play golf and I’m competing in opposition to myself greater than anybody else. I’m simply doing my factor, keep calm, and making an attempt to take the strain off. To me it doesn’t actually matter whether or not I’m taking part in in opposition to the previous champion or somebody that I don’t even know.”
She’ll face one other school grad in former LSU standout Latanna Stone within the second spherical.
Rao was the Ivy League rookie of the 12 months as a freshman and superior to the quarterfinals of final summer season’s Ladies’s British Novice and U.S. Ladies’s Novice, however she missed her complete sophomore season due to damage. Earlier this summer season, she once more made match play on the Ladies’s British Novice, shedding within the Spherical of 16.
Fourteen of the highest 20 within the Ladies’s World Novice Golf Rating, which was up to date Wednesday morning, teed it up this week, and all 14 made match play. Those self same gamers went 8-6 on Wednesday, although three of the highest 7 – UCLA’s Zoe Campos, USC’s Catherine Park and incoming Stanford freshman Andrea Revuelta – had been eradicated. Campos led USC’s Bailey Shoemaker, the newest runner-up on the Augusta Nationwide Ladies’s Novice, 2 up by way of 11 holes earlier than shedding, 1 down, as Shoemaker took the final gap with a bogey.
Shoemaker was the one participant to get by way of each a 20-for-10 playoff, which went simply two holes Wednesday morning, and her opening match.
“It doesn’t even really feel prefer it was as we speak,” Shoemaker mentioned of the playoff. “That was loopy. It’s my first ever USGA playoff. Clearly I used to be dissatisfied to even be in it, however it was a grind. I knew that if I simply make the par recreation like we do in school, simply whoever makes essentially the most pars will win.”
Stanford, the reigning NCAA crew champion and unquestioned No. 1 getting into this fall, has only one participant nonetheless on this championship (Kelly Xu) after sophomore Paula Martin Sampedro additionally bowed out on Wednesday. Texas has essentially the most gamers remaining with 4 – Farah O’Keefe, Lauren Kim, Angelo Heo and Cindy Hsu.
World No. 5 Jasmine Koo, an incoming freshman at USC, is the highest-ranked participant remaining after she topped Texas’ Selena Liao, 2 up. Wake Forest grad Rachel Kuehn (8), Texas A&M’s reigning NCAA particular person champ Adela Cernousek (9) and up to date U.S. Women’ Junior winner Rianne Malixi (10) had been the opposite top-10 gamers to advance to the Spherical of 32. Kuehn, who is about to show professional later this 12 months, scored essentially the most convincing win, a 7-and-5 rout of Palmer Cupper Mary Kelly Mulcahy, who went undefeated within the worldwide competitors final month. Kuehn’s subsequent opponent: Arkansas sophomore Maria Jose Marin, the highest seed because the stroke-play medalist, who beat Leigha Devine, 6 and 5.
