The Oregon women’s golf team has three days to make an up-and-down season finish on an upward swing.
The Ducks play in the NCAA West Regionals in Tempe, Ariz., this week. It’s a tournament that holds all the importance in the world for Oregon’s four seniors.
The golfers need to finish in the top 11 of the 24-team field in order to advance to the NCAA Championships at Sunriver May 24-27. Every one of those 24 teams, like the No. 26 Ducks, is ranked in the top 50 in the nation.
The Ducks will have 54 holes of golf today through Saturday to reverse history. In the 14-year “modern era” of Oregon women’s golf — the team was first recognized as a women’s sport in 1986 — the Ducks have made five appearances at the NCAA Championships. Four of those five times, they finished fifth or better at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships, which always features some of the top teams in the country. This year they finished seventh at the Pac-10s.
Oregon will rely on the steady play of their seniors and talented junior Jerilyn White in Tempe. The four seniors — co-captains Pam Sowden and Kylie Wilson, Anika Heuser and Angie Rizzo — have played together all year. All of the seniors have played in the NCAA Championships except Rizzo.
They will try to give head coach Renee Baumgartner, in her last year as coach before taking over assistant athletic director duties, a final trip to the NCAAs.
However, with all that experience, the team will rely on its youngest member to step up at the regionals. White, the only underclassman who regularly starts for the Ducks, is the team’s stroke-average leader and the only Duck ranked in the nation’s top 100 golfers at No. 80. White is also the only Duck besides Rizzo without NCAA Championship experience.
Oregon will need to perform well on a course that has already stymied them once this year. The Karsten Golf Course was the site of the Ping/Arizona State Invitational in early April, a tournament in which the Ducks finished 13th of 15 teams. Oregon had won two tournaments in a row before heading to Arizona for the Ping.
The Ducks will not have that kind of momentum going into the regionals. They placed seventh at the Pac-10 Championships two weeks ago, and the Ping/ASU Invitational was a mere week before that.
However, it seems like the Ducks are following mystical patterns in their season so far, where momentum means nothing and conversely, losing means nothing. Since October, the team has finished first, 16th, second, 14th, first, first, 13th, and seventh — in that order. That would seem to mean a return to winning form is inevitable, but the Ducks are running out of chances.
No. 1 Arizona, one of seven top-10 teams at the regionals, will be heavily favored to win despite the tough competition. Senior all Pac-10 and top-ranked Jenna Daniels will be shooting for her seventh top-three finish this week.
The West Regionals tee off today in Tempe. The golfers play 18 holes each day through Saturday.