USC cleans up mistakes, storms into NCAA women’s match play

CARLSBAD, Calif. – His team two shots out of the top eight and looking to get his top-ranked player going again at this NCAA Women’s Championship, USC head coach Justin Silverstein texted his assistant, Tiffany Joh, on Sunday evening and told her he was walking 18 holes of Monday’s final round with sophomore Catherine Park. He’d done so during last season’s closing stretch of tournaments, which culminated in Park nearly winning the NCAA individual title and the Trojans ending the year as the national runners-up.

“I told Tiff I was going full caddie mode,” Silverstein said. “I was turning off my phone, I wasn’t looking at a leaderboard. If we were going to get through, Cathy had to count.”

When Silverstein turned his phone back on, his Trojans had fired the round of the day around Omni La Costa, a 1-under 287, that shot USC up six spots to fourth on the leaderboard and into the knockout stage. Park improved by six shots from her third-round 79 while senior Brianna Navarrosa and freshman Bailey Shoemaker each led the way with 1-under 71s.

For the fourth straight year, Stanford grabbed the top match-play seed after shooting 2 over in 72 holes and winning the tiebreaker with LSU. The Cardinal draw eighth-seeded Auburn for the second time in three years while LSU will play Oregon. UCLA faces Texas A&M in another quarterfinal, and USC gets Clemson, which overcame the loss of its best player, Savannah Grewal, to the pros midseason to qualify for match play for the first time in program history.

Oregon and Auburn, in particular, used strong finishes to hold onto their match-play berths. The Ducks played their final nine, the front side, in 2 under while Anna Davis birdied the ninth hole to push the Tigers two clear of defending national champion Wake Forest, which posted a 22-over mark early.

The Demon Deacons, No. 1 in the country to kick off the spring semester, carded just 44 birdies over four rounds, better than just one team that made the 15-team, 54-hole cut.

Meanwhile, USC’s 57 birdies ranked only behind Texas A&M. The problem, at least through three days, had just been the undisciplined mistakes. Driving errors. Hooked irons. Poor wedge play. Skulled bunker shots. Lost balls, including three by Park in Round 1, and lots of penalty shots; Amari Avery had nearly a half-dozen in the first 36 holes.

“This was abnormal stuff, but we survived it,” Silverstein said.

With the recently re-designed La Costa being completely foreign to coaches and players, Silverstein and Joh spent nearly four hours walking the golf course last Wednesday, the walkthrough day. Though they couldn’t get within 30 yards of the greens, the USC coaches got every number they needed. It helped, too, that La Costa’s grasses are the same strains as the Trojans’ home course, Rolling Hills.

The gameplan they then developed hasn’t changed; their execution has. On Monday, after an evening of grinding on the range, USC carded no double bogeys or worse for the first time all week.

“Staying present has been difficult for this group this week,” Silverstein said. “I think our returners, including myself, were getting ahead of ourselves because of what we did last year. There was a bit of anxiety, like because we didn’t win last year, we need to get back into match play. … But we got off to a fast start today, weren’t chasing anymore, and we could take a deep breath.”

That won’t last long.

USC’s quarterfinal matches begin at 7:50 a.m. Tuesday.

Here are the full quarterfinal matchups and starting times:

Stanford (1) vs. Auburn (8)
Sadie Englemann vs. Anna Davis, 7:40 a.m. (off No. 1)
Rachel Heck vs. Anna Foster, 7:50 a.m.
Kelly Xu vs. Katie Cranston, 8 a.m.
Megha Ganne vs. Casey Weidenfeld, 8:10 a.m.
Paula Martin Sampedro vs. Meghan Schofill, 8:20 a.m.

USC (4) vs. Clemson (5)
Catherine Park vs. Melena Barrientos, 7:40 a.m. (off No. 10)
Amari Avery vs. Chloe Holder, 7:50 a.m.
Bailey Shoemaker vs. Isabella Rawl, 8 a.m.
Brianna Navarrosa vs. Sydney Roberts, 8:10 a.m.
Cindy Kou vs. Annabelle Pancake, 8:20 a.m.

LSU (2) vs. Oregon (7)
Carla Tejedo vs. Ching-Tzu Chen, 6:50 a.m. (off No. 1)

Taylor Riley vs. Minori Nagano, 7 a.m.

Latanna Stone vs. Ting-Hsuan Huang, 7:10 a.m.

Ingrid Lindblad vs. Karen Tsuru, 7:20 a.m.

Aine Donegan vs. Kiara Romero, 7:30 a.m.

Texas A&M (3) vs. UCLA (6)
Blanca Fernandez Garcia-Poggio vs. Meghan Royal, 6:50 a.m. (off No. 10)
Cayetana Fernandez Garcia-Poggio vs. Caroline Canales, 7 a.m.
Zoe Slaughter vs. Natalie Vo, 7:10 a.m.
Adela Cernousek vs. Katie Villegas, 7:20 a.m.
Jennie Park vs. Zoe Campos, 7:30 a.m.