After a fourth-place finish in the Pac-12 championship on April 27, the UCLA women’s golf team’s postseason fortunes turned around Saturday as the Bruins placed first in the NCAA Central Regional, earning a berth in the NCAA championship finals.
But the No. 1-seed Bruins’ path to victory wasn’t clear at first. After the first day of competition at the Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. Thursday, UCLA found itself tied for sixth place out of the 24 teams participating. With just the top eight teams advancing to the finals, the Bruins were tenuously hanging on to a spot in that group, but still remained within striking distance from the lead; at +11, UCLA was both four strokes from first place and from being in a three-way tie for eighth.
But the Bruins turned things around in the second and third rounds. In the second round on Friday, UCLA’s score of 289 (+1) was 10 strokes lower than the previous day’s, and a round three score of 287 (-1) catapulted the Bruins to a comfortable position atop the leaderboard. UCLA’s three-round tournament score of 875 (+11) was 17 strokes ahead of the second-place team, Alabama.
The Bruins didn’t have any individual qualifiers for the NCAA finals, as freshman Alison Lee, who tied for fifth place with a score of 217 (+1), was UCLA’s top performer. Only the top two individuals in the tournament earned solo berths in the finals.
The first-place team finish marked the eighth time UCLA has won the an NCAA regional championship and the 13th straight time it has advanced to the NCAA finals. The Bruins will compete for a national championship May 20-23 in Tulsa, Okla. as one of 24 teams in the final round of competition.
Compiled by Kevin Bowman, Bruin Sports senior staff.