When Stanford wins a golf tournament, head coach Anne Walker will typically reward her players with cupcakes and a trip to the local coffee shop.<\/p>\n
\u201c$7.50 coffee is a big deal by the way,\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n
And when you\u2019re the Cardinal, that adds up in a hurry.<\/p>\n
Unquestionably the most dominant women\u2019s golf program this decade, Stanford has won more tournaments in the last six seasons (40) than it has head-to-head losses (35). During that span, the Cardinal boast four NCAA regional titles and have yet to finish anything other than first in the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Championship, which could be considered victories of their own.<\/p>\n
Stanford might not measure success by trophies, but it doesn\u2019t mean the Cardinal don\u2019t cherish each one. Someone asked Walker recently if she and her players were done celebrating every, single win. Walker\u2019s response was quick: \u201cHeck no.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo not think that I\u2019m na\u00efve enough to think that it will always be like this,\u201d Walker said. \u201cAlready our duration of being at the top has been longer than anyone could have dreamed. So, we\u2019re going to keep fighting, but we need to earn it. We can\u2019t rest on our laurels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanford\u2019s most recent triumph was certainly hard-fought.<\/p>\n
Walker\u2019s coaching philosophy has always been to build a dynamic schedule \u2013 tournaments where her team would be heavy favorites, and others where they\u2019d have to battle; courses that require winners to card a ton of birdies, and layouts where par is a winning score; different grasses, lengths, etc. The Charles Schwab Challenge, which wrapped Tuesday, was a brute. Its lineup featured seven of the top 11 teams in the country, including the top-ranked Cardinal. The stage, Colonial Country Club, which annually tests the world\u2019s best on the PGA Tour, was made especially demanding by swirling winds that seem to come from every direction. Stanford gutted out a winning score of 8 over, three better than a charging Oregon squad that claimed the individual winner in Kiara Romero, the world\u2019s No. 1 amateur, fired 2 under on the final day. Twice in three rounds, the Cardinal\u2019s four counting players totaled just seven birdies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one was such a gritty one,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThat course is so hard, and the field is totally stacked. \u2026 It\u2019s a great warm-up for Augusta.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah, yes, Augusta. Stanford\u2019s regular season, aside from a few individuals competing in the Silicon Valley Showcase in two weeks, is complete, with the Cardinal not competing as a collective again until the ACC Championship on April 16-19. In the meantime, all five Stanford starters \u2013 Megha Ganne, Paula Martin Sampedro, Andrea Revuelta, Meja Ortengren and Kelly Xu \u2013 will tee it up in the Augusta National Women\u2019s Amateur, which will be contested Wednesday-Thursday at Champions Retreat before the final round is played Saturday on Augusta National Golf Club. Both venues, Walker says, require the utmost focus because \u201cevery shot is so intense, and every shot demands your full attention. You can\u2019t just laser it, pull a club and swing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This Stanford five comprises spots Nos. 2, 3, 5 and 6 in the world amateur rankings with Xu ranking a ho-hum 20th. All five played Saturday at last year\u2019s ANWA, where Revuelta shared fourth and Ganne notched her second career top-10 finish (T-7).<\/p>\n
Sampedro is considered one of the favorites next week. Not only did the junior from Spain win both the British Amateur and European Ladies last summer but she tied for eighth to claim low-amateur honors at the AIG Women\u2019s Open. Her T-5 at Colonial was her fifth straight top-5 finish in college golf, too, as Walker says Sampedro hit the gym hard this winter, gaining several mph of clubhead speed.<\/p>\n
Revuelta, just behind her second-ranked countrywoman at No. 3 in the world, is much healthier than this time a year ago when she was coming off a shoulder injury that forced her to miss the first couple months of her spring semester. Her T-19 at the Charles Schwab marked her worst finish anywhere since she was T-24 at last spring\u2019s NCAA Championship.<\/p>\n
Ortengren\u2019s putting, particularly her lag ability and speed on the greens, is markedly better, and she\u2019ll enter ANWA having finished eighth or better in six straight tournaments. Xu hasn\u2019t placed outside the top 12 this season (seven starts).<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Ganne, the defending U.S. Women\u2019s Amateur champion. She did not play at Colonial, her second straight missed 54-hole tournament. Ganne, who has dealt with several injuries in recent years, has been nursing a bothersome ankle and with a busy stretch upcoming \u2013 ANWA, ACCs, Chevron, regionals, nationals and U.S. Women\u2019s Open; all in a two-month span \u2013 she\u2019s been cognizant of using this window to heal up. Sampedro also plans on the same competitive schedule, meaning if Stanford wants to win its fourth NCAA crown under Walker, it will need to work smarter, not harder.<\/p>\n
Walker collabs with her players and their own teams in laying out detailed schedules, balancing when to compete, when to practice and when to recover.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done what we can on paper,\u201d Walker adds, \u201cbut we also have to stay nimble and be checking in all the time \u2013 How does the body feel? How do you feel? How does the game feel?\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker also is aware that no amount of preparation can guarantee national titles in this sport, not with match play determining the ultimate champion. Stanford didn\u2019t lose a stroke-play competition last season, winning nine times by a combined 117 shots (24 of those at nationals), yet was upset by Northwestern in the championship match at La Costa.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou fear a great player who has nothing to lose,\u201d Walker said, \u201cand as long as we continue to be in a position where we have a dominant regular season, we will continue to face foes who are swinging free and have nothing to lose, and we\u2019re just going to have to be at our best, if not better, but it takes a lot of things going right.\u201d<\/p>\n
That holds true for NCAAs, and for next week\u2019s ANWA, and for whatever big tournament comes down the pipe.<\/p>\n
Stanford will continue to get everyone\u2019s best shots, and the cupcakes won\u2019t get any less sweet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Stanford wins a golf tournament, head coach Anne Walker will typically reward her players with cupcakes and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-562483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}