Women’s golf competes in Napa ahead of conference championships

April 1, 2016, 2:39 a.m.

In its final tune-up before the Pac-12 Championships begin on April 18, No. 9 Stanford women’s golf will head to Napa, California to play in the Silverado Showdown this Sunday through Tuesday.

(AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)
Mariah Stackhouse (above), along with teammate Lauren Kim, ranks as one of the top-20 women’s golfers in the country and has had a strong season as the Cardinal hope to defend their national title with the Pac-12 and NCAA Championships approaching. (AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)

The Cardinal will hope to use this event to establish some consistency as their end-of-season tournaments approach. The defending national champions have posted a number of strong results in their recent events, but they will have to be near the top of their game if they wish to capture a title in the deep Pac-12 conference, which features seven of the nation’s top 15 teams.

Stanford will look to its talented seniors to lead the team down this stretch. Mariah Stackhouse and Lauren Kim are both ranked amongst the top-20 women’s golfers in the country, after posting a series of strong performances throughout the team’s spring season thus far, and the two will look to get their team back into position to defend their title in the coming months.

The biggest question mark about whether the team can achieve this effort is whether the rest of the Cardinal’s rotation can step up. Sophomore Shannon Aubert and juniors Casey Danielson and Quirine Eijkenboom played their best golf of last season in the matches leading up to the Cardinal’s championship dual with Baylor, and they will need to demonstrate this consistency again if the team wishes to challenge Pac-12 favorites No. 2 USC and No. 3 UCLA.

This week’s event will have little direct bearing on the team’s end-of-season competitions, but it will provide the team with one last chance to hone its nerves and show what it can accomplish against a field that figures to include both local and national competitors.

The event will tee off on Sunday, April 8 with live scoring provided via Golfstat.

 

Contact Andrew Mather at [email protected].

Andrew Mather served as a sports editor and as the Chief Operating Officer of The Daily. A devout Clippers and Iowa Hawkeyes fan from the suburbs of Los Angeles, Mather grew accustomed to watching his favorite programs snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He brought this nihilistic pessimism to The Daily, where he often felt a sense of déjà vu while covering basketball, football and golf.

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