Stanford wins 2nd NCAA with Zhang
Last year it was Heck, this time a freshman
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Rose Zhang overcame a shaky front nine to shoot a 3-over 75 on Monday, capping her stellar freshman season with Stanford’s second straight individual NCAA championship.
Zhang was wobbly after an early birdie in the final individual round at Grayhawk’s Raptor Course, allowing Texas A&M’s Jenny Park to trim a seven-shot lead to three by the 10th hole. Zhang righted herself with a short birdie on the par-3 13th and pushed the lead back to five when Park three-putted for bogey.
The top player in the women’s amateur ranking two-putted for par on the par-5 18th and celebrated with her teammates on the same green where Rachel Heck became Stanford’s first national champion a year ago. Zhang finished at 6-under 282 to become the 10th freshman to win a national individual title.
Zhang arrived at Stanford after a stellar junior career.
The Irvine, California, native became the third player to win the McCormack Medal as the world’s top amateur golfer more than once, and was the two-time Rolex junior player of the year.
Zhang became the eighth player to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Girls Junior Championship — and the first to win the Amateur first. She also represented the United States in the 2021 Curtis Cup and broke the amateur record in the LPGA Tour major then known as the ANA Inspiration in 2020.
Zhang’s dominance continued right into college. She became the first Stanford player — male or female — to win their first three events and was made All-Pac-12 first team.
Once she arrived in the desert, Zhang fought through windy conditions to open the NCAA Championship with a 4-under 68 at Grayhawk and followed that with a 70. A thirdround 69 put her seven shots ahead.
JUST IN TIME: Justin Thomas barely remembers his first PGA Championship five years ago except for fans chanting his initials and the 7-iron he hit on the 17th that effectively won it for him.
Winning anywhere is hard even for great players — Thomas had gone 14 months since his last one — so as he climbed the hill toward the 18th green during the three-hole playoff, he made sure to soak up the grand stage below the pink clubhouse at Southern Hills in Oklahoma.
“I knew it wasn’t over, but I looked up and wanted to take it in because you don’t know when and if it’s going to happen again,” Thomas said. “And it’s such an unbelievable, cool feeling that you just want to enjoy it.”
Considering how he arrived at another PGA Championship, this major will be hard to forget.
Thomas was seven shots behind to start the final day. He hit a shank on the par-3 sixth hole that could have — probably should have — ended whatever chances he had. He holed a putt from 65 feet early on the back nine to stay in the game.
And then a major that had so little going for it — no star power at the top, no drama on the ground, no red shirt on Sunday when Tiger Woods withdrew — turned into pure theater of chaos and collapses.
The signature shot for Thomas was his 3-wood on the 301-yard 17th hole — the second of the three-hole playoff against Will Zalatoris — so perfect that he let the club twirl through his hands as it soared over a creek and onto the green some 35 feet from the hole for a birdie that gave him the lead for the first time all day.
The shank? Sometimes players use that term to describe a bad shot. Not this 5-iron.
The hole played 228 yards. The tee shot traveled 108 yards at a 45-degree angle, lucky it didn’t find a stream behind the second green. The next shot hit a tree and settled 10 yards away. And then he hit a shot his caddie described as a “low, cutty, spinny gap wedge” to 18 feet and made the putt. That might have been as great a shot as any he hit.
“It was the best bogey I’ve ever made in my life, that’s for sure,” Thomas said.
U.S. OPEN QUALIFYING: In Dallas, Sean Crocker qualified for his first U.S. Open, among 13 players in Dallas and three in Japan who earned spots at The Country Club next month.
The 36-hole qualifiers were the first of 11 that will fill the field for the U.S. Open, June 16-19 outside Boston.
Crocker, born in Zimbabwe and raised in California through his college years at USC, flew to Texas and delivered rounds of 64 at Royal Oaks and 67 at Lakewood Country Club.
He was joined at 11-under par by Kurt Kitayama, Matthew NeSmith and Jinchiro Kozuma.
Mackenzie Hughes was among four Canadians who qualified in Dallas, which was one of the larger sectional qualifying fields because of the PGA Tour event at Colonial this week.
Graeme McDowell, who won the Open in 2010 at Pebble Beach, missed the 6-for-2 playoff in Dallas by one shot. Matt Kuchar also failed to qualify and is likely to miss the U.S. Open for the first time in 15 years.
The other nine sectional qualifiers will be June 6, the Monday before U.S. Open week.