{"id":282479,"date":"2026-05-24T01:52:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282479\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T01:52:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:52:29","slug":"widjaja-3-under-sits-one-back-of-lead-at-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282479\/","title":{"rendered":"Widjaja 3-under, sits one back of lead at National Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

CARLSBAD, Calif. \u2013 Florida women’s golfer Elaine Widjaja<\/a> led the No. 3 Gators in the opening round of the NCAA National Championship with a 3-under 69 to sit one shot back of the individual lead on Friday at La Costa. The Gators tied for 23rd.<\/p>\n

Entering as the top seed out of the SEC, Florida was paired with No. 1 Stanford and No. 2 USC, who sit first and second with the Trojans 7-under and Stanford 6-under. The group of the top three ranked teams tee off round two tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

The first to tee off nationals for UF, Widjaja made the turn bogey-free and 2-under. She only made one bogey in her first round, which didn’t come until her fifteenth hole, on hole six (Florida teed off the back nine). The sophomore erased it by a pair of birdies on seven and eight. She made one her four birdies on the second-hardest hole of the day and it was one only seven total birdies, which came on the par4 seventh (450 yards).\u00a0<\/p>\n

This was the second straight season a Gator opened with a 3-under in the National Championship with Jessica Guiser<\/a> shooting the mark last year.\u00a0Widjaja is one stroke back of leaders Ellie Bushnell of Oklahoma State and Megha Ganne of Stanford. The round was a career low for her\u00a0in the postseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a team, Florida had round one score of 297 (+9) and are tied for XX. The next three counting scores all fell within a shot of one another with Megan Propeck’s<\/a> 75 (+3), Siuue Wu’s<\/a> 76 (+4) and Paula Francisco’s<\/a> 77 (+5).<\/p>\n

There will be a 54-hole cut of the top-15 teams on and nine individuals on a non-advancing team on Sunday to earn a spot and play in the final round of stroke play on Monday.<\/p>\n

After the final 18 holes, the top-8 teams will advance to match play and a 72-hole individual national champion is crowned. The team national champion will be determined by a match-play format features the quarterfinals and semifinals conducted on Tuesday, followed by the finals on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Florida Scores

\nT3. Elaine Widjaja<\/a> \u2013 69 (-3)

\nT100. Megan Propeck<\/a> \u2013 75 (+3)

\nT113. Siuue Wu<\/a> \u2013 76 (+4)

\nT122. Paula Francisco<\/a> \u2013 77 (+5)

\nT135. Katelyn Huber<\/a> \u2013 78 (+6)<\/p>\n

Team Leaderboard

\n1. USC (-7)

\n2. Stanford (-6)

\n3. Oklahoma State (-5)

\n4. Iowa State (-4)

\nT5. Arkansas (-2)

\nT5. Eastern Michigan (-2)

\n7. Missouri (-1)

\nT8. SMU (E)

\nT8. LSU (E)

\nT8. Texas (E)

\nT11. Baylor (+1)

\nT11. Texas A&M (+1)

\nT11. Arizona State (+1)

\nT11. Virginia (+1)

\n15. Northwestern (+2)

\nT16. Duke (+3)

\nT16. Tennessee (+3)

\n18. Florida State (+4)

\n19. North Carolina (+5)

\n20. Houston (+6)

\nT21. Texas Tech (+8)

\nT21. Pepperdine (+8)

\nT23. Florida (+9)

\nT23. Ohio State (+9)

\nT25. Kentucky (+10)

\nT25. Michigan State (+10)

\nT27. Wake Forest (+12)

\nT27. Oregon State (+12)

\n29. Ole Miss (+12)

\n30. Auburn (+14)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARLSBAD, Calif. \u2013 Florida women’s golfer Elaine Widjaja led the No. 3 Gators in the opening round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-282479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}