Welcome to the Stanford Men's Golf NCAA Blog! My name is Julie Ryder and I am the sports information contact for the men's golf team at Stanford. Having been lucky enough to accompany the team out here to Indiana, it enabled me to create this blog. My hope is that it provides some extra information that wouldn't normally be in a standard recap to the Stanford golf fans who cannot be here to cheer the Cardinal on. Please enjoy and keep checking back for more updates throughout the tournament!
Tuesday, May 27: The day before the tournament begins...it was extremely foggy early in the morning, and while it burned off partially, it remained soggy, rainy, and gray most of the day, dampening the course fairly well during the practice rounds. Here's hoping things dry out for tomorrow, and that Stanford will benefit from having an afternoon start. More to come tomorrow when the tournament starts!
Wednesday, May 28, 1 p.m. ET: The tournament is under way! The weather is a bit cool, but it's sunny outside with a great forecast for today. The tournament is already running behind, and Stanford is now approximately going to tee off at 1:45 p.m.
Yesterday, because of the rain, Stanford only got 12 holes in on the practice round. The report is that even though everything is pretty dry, the greens are tough, the rough is extremely thick, and if the wind picks up, that will add another difficult element.
I just heard that Webstream Productions will be doing live video web streaming of the third and fourth rounds of the tournament. The video can be found at golfstat.com and ncaa.com, as well as on the NCAA Championships page on purduesports.com. The link will be posted here when it becomes available. On Friday for the third round live streaming will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. ET. On Saturday for the final round live streaming is from 9 a.m. to completion and through the awards ceremony.
Wednesday, May 28, 10 p.m. ET: Day One is in the books. It was a beautiful day today, not too hot, not too cold, and bright sun to top it off. Even though we are tied for 12th place right now, the Cardinal were one-under-par for much of the front-nine today, through eight holes if I remember correctly. Now it's just all about putting a complete round together.
A lot of the scores were inflated for many of the teams today, and that can be chalked up to the course's difficulty. It was windier and slicker in the morning, oh, and Conrad wasn't kidding about the rough, it's probably 6-8 inches long and a ball can really get buried in there, as one of the Charlotte players in our pairing learned when he lost his ball near the fourth green. Several people helped him looked for the ball, but after the alloted four minutes no one saw any sign of it. It definitely got swallowed by the terrain.
If you happen to land in rough, and there's really not much space between the fairway and jungle (as I have named it), it might actually be better to hit a safe ball on to the fairway to get a better shot then trying to go for it out of the rough.
Early day tomorrow...will provide an update most likely after the round is over.
Thursday, May 29, 1:10 p.m. ET: Stanford is about to finish up the second round, and once we finish up I'll give some details on our day here, as I can't get an official recap up until tonight when everyone is finished. As of right now we were shooting two-over-par on the day, a significant improvement from yesterday. We were still some strokes behind UCLA though, who was leading at the time of writing this.
In the meantime, I got an email from Lance Ringler at Golfweek TV, and he wanted to share a link to all his videos covering the NCAA Championships, which can be found here. His segment is called "Off-Campus". There's a heck of a lot of stuff to watch, and I haven't had a chance to scan too many of them for Stanford bits. Not sure if there is any because I didn't see any video cameras following our guys around while I was out there, but who knows, they could have been filming while I was at a different hole, braving the bugs and the itchiness of the long grass to get some good photos of our guys on the tee. Anyways, that site has pretty extensive coverage of the NCAA Championships as a whole and it's definitely worth checking out.
Speaking of photos, eventually all of the photos I have taken here at the NCAAs will end up on stanfordphoto.com, so be sure to check that out as well.
Thursday, May 29, 2:30 p.m. ET: Well, Stanford is all finished up for the day, and what an improvement! The Cardinal collectively shot even-par today, and had pretty solid performances from everyone, including Rob Grube, who stepped up and shot a three-under-par 69. Grube posted four birdies on the day, and had just one blemish, a bogey, on his last hole of the day.
It was another beautiful day in the Midwest today as the weather remained pretty much the same as it was yesterday, except a bit warmer, and there were some high cirrus clouds in the sky. Unfortunately, cirrus clouds tend to precede wet weather, and after looking at tomorrow's forecast, there is indeed a chance of rain and thunderstorms. Also, there was little to no wind today, which made the long, links-style course a bit easier on everyone, evident in the scores of the teams who have completed their rounds today. So far, any team that has finished has not hit more than 16-over-par, when yesterday teams were in the 20's and 30's-plus. Stanford is 21-over-par after two rounds, and only eight strokes back of current leader, Clemson, who has also finished for the day.
If you want to check out Stanford's scores after 36 holes, head on over to GolfStat. I will be posting my recap tonight once everyone is finished and I receive the .pdf of the final stats. One last note, I spoke with Conrad and Rob today at length after the round, so I will be posting a separate .pdf file link with several quotes on the recap at gostanford.com. Until tomorrow... GO CARDINAL!
Friday, May 30, 9:30 a.m. ET: So far so good with the weather. It's significantly windier today, but not terrible. When the wind blows out here, even if it's just a little bit, it can really affect a golfer's game, as there really aren't a whole lot of trees or other structures lining the course to block any of the gusts. Basically, from what I've heard talking to locals around Purdue is that it was a big piece of open land/farm land that was converted to a golf course about seven years ago. Some of the features are still coming into their full growth on the course. Also, many of the larger bodies of water at this course have dead tree lines and other flora sticking up out from the shallow depths of the water, an obvious man-made, flooded body.
It's also cloudy on and off right now, and the word is we're not supposed to get rain and thunder until the late afternoon, meaning Stanford should get its 18 in. We're off to a great start this morning! Right now we are on holes 4-6 on the front-nine and are five-under-par and currently tied for second! Let's all hope the Cardinal continue to play positively and handle the wind and the back-nine well.
Oh and regarding my earlier post, of those videos from Golfweek TV, the only mention I could find about Stanford was in the NCAA Championships Preview. I know were already two days in but it's always fun to go back and look at predictions and outlooks for the tournament.
Live streaming at holes 1, 2, 17, and 18 are set to begin at 10 a.m. today, be sure to take a peek at that on GolfStat, Stanford should be approaching the 17th hole around 1:30 -1:45 p.m. ET.
Friday, May 30, 2:30 p.m. ET: We played much faster today than yesterday, so I hope you were able to see the team come through 17 and 18 at about 1 p.m. Oh, and I lied about the wind earlier. Once I got out on the course it was very breezy but as the round went on it turned into downright blustery. The wind was coming out of the south, and it was such a factor that on the seventh hole (headed straight into the wind) I saw Sihwan hit what looked to be a great shot right at the pin from the 150-175 yards out, but it looked like it just hit a wall and fell straight down short of the green.
We did quite well again today...and we just keep chipping off spots on the leaderboard. In fact, if we were to keep up the trend, we'd be the winners tomorrow as we were in fourth place upon finishing (12th, 8th, 4th, etc)! We're just five strokes out of first! Rob is just four-over and is currently tied for 11th. Also, to credit the Pac-10, USC, UCLA, and Stanford are all topping the leaderboard.
I don't know if the afternoon teams will be able to finish their round, you can see the storms building out to the west, although it doesn't look terribly threatening...yet. Crossing our fingers for no lightning, but even if it rains it will be miserable out there. Think sideways rain...it's that windy!
If you're looking for some more coverage on the tournament, the local paper, the Journal & Courier is out here, and I know our local papers, the Merc, the Chronicle, Stanford Daily, and the Daily News have all had some articles and other bits and pieces over the last few days.
Also, Here are the links to the live video, if you didn't find them on GolfStat. They were emailed to me while I was out on the course.
Fri 10-2 AM ET:
http://www.nmnathletics.com//mediaPortal/player.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=30600&id=
Fri 3-7 PM ET:
http://www.nmnathletics.com//mediaPortal/player.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=30600&id=
Sat 9-4 AM ET
http://www.nmnathletics.com//mediaPortal/player.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=30600&id=
Recap coming tonight when Round 3 is all finished up, and a lot more from Conrad and Rob.
Friday, May 30, 10:15 p.m. ET: Just wanted to give you all a quick update. If you have read the recap I just posted, we had a tornado warning here at Purdue this evening. We are all safe, and nothing really happened, so no need to worry. Those golfers still on the course were taken to the basketball arena to take shelter and those of us at the hotel took shelter there. It was really more bark than bite, but it was still a pretty impressive thunderstorm. The worst of the storm missed us and the actual tornado was north and east of us by about 10 miles, although I did happen to observe (and take a photo) of a funnel cloud that passed directly over our hotel that swirled around quite a bit but never touched down. Pretty scary stuff! Our hotel power went out for a moment during all of this and messed with the internet connection, and I was only able to get it back about half an hour ago, hence the delay in a recap showing up. Anyways, the threat of severe storms is over for the moment and we look forward to getting back underway tomorrow!
Saturday, May 31, 9:00 p.m. ET: Well we are all finished up here in Indiana. Unfortunately we didn't come out on top, but the Cardinal performed admirably, and it was OH SO CLOSE. We had a terrible west wind blowing today, and it rained so much during last night's stomr there were inches-deep puddles in the traps...but we had the best round of any team on the day and we definitely gave ourselves a chance.
We were all sitting on the No. 18 green for quite a while after we finished, watching the live results, and for a while it looked as if UCLA, USC, and Stanford would all tie at 43-over-par. We didn't know for sure because of the lag in the live stats sometimes.
The guys were preparing for a playoff, and it was tense sitting there waiting to learn our fate, as we heard that Kevin Chappell from UCLA almost double-bogeyed No. 17, but saved himself at the last moment. We needed that double-bogey, but sometimes that's the way things go. He came down and two-putted for par on No. 18 to seal the victory. USC almost tied us, as Tim Slutier's first putt stopped just on the rim of the cup. He had to knock it in to finish third.
It's been a great season this year, and an incredible four days here in Indiana. Thank you all for following along and GO CARDINAL!