SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — After being bounced in the first round of last year’s NCAA Championship as the No. 1 seed, Stanford got its revenge this year.
The top-ranked Cardinal and this year’s No. 1 seed defeated No. 2 Oregon to win the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship to become the first No. 1 seed to win the title in the match-play era.
With faculty fellow and academic advisor Condoleezza Rice watching, Stanford earned its sixth win of the season and second national title in program history following the first in 2015, when match play made its debut at the women’s championship.
The win puts to bed a stellar season that featured six wins, four runner-up finishes and a worst finish of T-3. All five players finished inside the top 40 on the individual leaderboard in stroke play to start this week, with freshman phenom Rose Zhang earning medalist honors and following in the footsteps of her teammate, Rachel Heck, who won in 2021. Zhang also earned the ANNIKA Award as the top women’s collegiate golfer in the country.
Stanford earned its spot in the final with a pair of 3-2 wins, first against Georgia in the quarterfinals on Tuesday morning and in the afternoon against Auburn in the semifinals. Upperclassmen Aline Krauter and Brooke Seay, who won the Elite 90 award with the highest cumulative grade-point average (4.0 in human biology) among those participating at the finals for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships, both went undefeated, winning all three of their matches.
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