The Northwestern Wildcats won their first ever women’s golf Division I National Championship Wednesday, upsetting Stanford 3-2.
It was all Stanford early on, with stars Megha Ganne and Paula Martín Sampedro jumping out to early leads. Ganne maintained it throughout the day, never letting Northwestern’s Ashley Yun into the match, taking a three-hole lead through four and never allowing it to get closer, winning 5&4.
Things began to flip as Sampedro gave up her lead to Lauren Nguyen early, and began trailing on hole six. At the same time, Hsin Tai Lin of Northwestern opened up a commanding lead over Meja Örtengren, taking a three-up lead through seven. This would be the other dominant match of the day as Örtengren never gave a real challenge to Lin and lost 3&2.
Northwestern looked like the could run away with it in easy fashion, leading three matches all day, that just extended when Northwestern’s Elise Lee took the lead over veteran Kelly Xu on 15.
The third match to go final was Nguyen vs Sampedro, where the Stanford star mounted an unlikely comeback, winning holes 16 and 17 to force the match to get to hole 18. Nguyen stepped up to the massive moment though, hitting a terrific shot into 18 and burying the uphill birdie putt.
At the same time Sampedro was rallying, so too was Kelly Xu. Xu won 16 and 17 to take the 1 UP lead, then made a solid par on the last to get the win over Lee.
Everything came down to the final match, where Stanford’s Andrea Revuelta had brought down a three-hole deficit to just one hole against Northwestern’s Dianna Lee. On both 17 and 18, Lee hit poor putts that kept Revuelta alive, but she came in clutch in the end for her second putt on 18, burying it for the national title.
