BRADENTON, Fla. – The Cardinal is back.
Stanford inched its way up the leaderboard by shooting even-par on the back nine Sunday in the third round of the NCAA Championships. Sitting in 10th through 36 holes, Stanford bumped ahead to seventh place among the 24-team field.
Stanford’s 8-over 296 was the second-best score by a team that finished its third round at the challenging par-72 layout of The Concession Golf Club. That score came after earlier rounds of 5-over and 35-over.
Play was halted due to darkness with six teams still on the course. Those teams -- including first-place USC (+28) and second-place Duke (+31) -- will resume their third round Monday morning.
Each Cardinal women’s golfer shaved multiple strokes off their Saturday total. Hitting the reset button was Casey Danielson and her 2-over 74, a team-best 13 shots lower than her round-two 87, which triggered the divot squad to potentially claiming a spot in the eight-team match play contingent. Danielson was 1-under on the back nine.
“We stuck with our same strategy, but we refocused and went into this round with a lot of patience,” said head coach Anne Walker. “We did a better job of realizing that since there are so many tough greens out here, it was best to put ourselves in places that at worst left us with a bogey.
“The team got up-and-down a lot to save par, and that will give us confidence going into the next round.”
Lauren Kim (E) led the way with an even-par 72 that included three birdies. Shannon Aubert (+3) was even on the back nine with a pair of birdies, and Mariah Stackhouse (+3) had to wait until her 17th to find a birdie.
Stackhouse is tied for eighth in the medalist race and trails Alabama’s Emma Talley (E) by five strokes.
Stanford teamed to birdie the par-5 17th four times and counted only one double bogey to its team total. In its previous round, the Cardinal counted 11 scores of double bogey or worse.
The event continues Monday with live results available at GoStanford.com.
Following 54-holes of stroke play the top 15 teams -- and the top nine individuals not on an advancing teams -- will compete in a fourth round of stroke play to determine the top eight teams for the match play competition and the 72-hole stroke-play individual champion.
The top eight teams after 72 holes of stroke play will be placed into a bracket for the match play portion of the tournament, which takes place Tuesday (quarterfinals and semifinals) and Wednesday (finals).