Stanford’s Lee is key to NCAA team title hopes
Stanford women’s coach Anne Walker knew Andrea Lee was a prized recruit. Walker also suspected Lee followed the stereotype of elite girls golfers, robotically hitting fairways and greens while singlemindedly immersing herself in the game.
Then, during a routine phone call a couple of winters ago, Walker unwittingly gained insight into another side of Lee. She nonchalantly mentioned she was going snowboarding the following week with her family, in the mountains east of Los Angeles.
“I almost fell off my chair,” Walker said. “This is not something I hear from high-end players — they typically don’t do anything beyond golf-golf-golf. … I think it helps her game. She’s an adjusted girl and she’s fearless.”
There’s a lesson here for budding prodigies: It’s perfectly fine to maintain other interests. They might even strengthen the sacred pursuit of hitting fairways and greens.
Lee now is a Stanford freshman and the No. 2-ranked college player in the nation (according to Golfweek), behind only Duke’s Leona Maguire. This week, Lee leads the No. 3 Cardinal into the NCAA championships starting Friday outside Chicago.
That recruiting conversation highlighted another piece of Lee’s repertoire: She’s more athletic than many young women golfers. This helps explain her smooth transition to the college game at Stanford.
Lee won her first tournament with the Cardinal, the Windy City Collegiate Challenge in October. She has collected three victories in all as a freshman, plus four other top-three finishes.
Along the way, Lee is embracing the team dynamics of college golf and learning lessons in patience. Walker has helped Lee stay calm and positive when her swing temporarily abandons her.
“Sometimes, I get a little impatient with myself if I make a mistake out there,” Lee said. “It irks me a little bit.”
This makes perfect sense, for Lee to harbor crazy-high expectations. Consider how she spent her time between graduating from Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach (she’s from nearby Hermosa Beach) and enrolling at Stanford last fall.
She reached the finals of the U.S. Junior Girls Championship, made the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, played on the U.S. Curtis Cup and World Amateur teams and was runner-up in the Canadian Women’s Amateur. Nice summer. “She’s accustomed to playing alongside the best and doing well,” Walker said.
The only thing to nearly derail Lee was a freak accident — and it didn’t happen while snowboarding. She slammed a car door on her thumb over winter break, briefly leaving her panicky about the impending start to Stanford’s spring season.
“I freaked out — my thumb turned purple instantly,” Lee said. “It took me a while to hold the club properly again.”
Now she has a firm grip on her game. She still finds time for other interests, to the delight of her college friends. Lee, who occasionally sings karaoke in Southern California — and is taking a voice class this quarter — broke into song during a nationally televised interview at the Women’s Amateur.
The YouTube video remains popular among her dorm mates.
“It’s pretty embarrassing,” Lee said.
McNealy misses record: The best player on Stanford’s men’s team, Maverick McNealy, had a great chance to push aside Tiger Woods in the record book Wednesday.
McNealy, playing in an NCAA regional at his home course, made birdies on Nos. 14 and 15 to tie Oklahoma’s Brad Dalke for the lead. Dalke already had posted 12-under for the tournament, so McNealy needed to play the final three holes in even-par to share the individual title.
That officially would have counted as a win, boosting McNealy’s career total to 12 — and breaking the school record he shares with Woods and Patrick Rodgers.
But McNealy made double bogey on No. 17, when his par putt lipped out and he missed the comeback attempt. He then made another double bogey on No. 18 to shoot 70 and fall into third place at 8-under.
Stanford tied for first with Baylor in the team competition. Pepperdine, Oklahoma and North Carolina also advanced to the NCAA championships, which start May 26.
Cal’s Collin Morikawa, competing as an individual in the Stanford regional, shot 74 on Wednesday and missed qualifying for next week’s NCAAs.
Kim’s local link: Players Championship winner Si Woo Kim has a Bay Area connection. He won the Web.com Tour event in Hayward in July 2015, outdueling Jamie Lovemark and Wes Roach in a playoff to take the Stonebrae Classic.