Match Play Strikes Again! Women's NCAA Dynasties Shocked

If you had the luxury of watching any or all of the NCAA Women's Golf Championships Tuesday from Florida's The Concession, you'll know that the consensus top two teams were knocked off, giving us Wednesday's surprising Stanford-Baylor final. Mercifully, there wasn't too much grousing about the vagaries of match play (at least yet), perhaps because the setup yielded a bit and seemingly let the players win with their skill. Besides, both Duke and USC had their shot at winning and simply failed.

The emotions and athleticism conveyed during Tuesdays grueling 36 holes also served as reminder #459 that team match play of some form would be so much fun in the Olympics, even if it was trimmed from college golfs five players to three and the coaches were famous retired golfers driving carts around for no decent reason.

Either way, the stellar coverage from Golf Channel--including live plane shots of shots and great reactions captured the passion of college golf--sets up what should be another dramatic match play final Wednesday.

Jay Coffin files this roundup of Baylor vs. Stanford and how they got to the finals by beating the season long 1-2 punch of Duke and USC.  And here's the video roundup with Golf Channel's team.

But the craziest story of the day was summed up by Ryan Lavner here, covering the 24-hole match between two struggling players who decided the fate of Duke and Baylor. Lauren Whyte of Baylor was not having the best week, yet because of the match play format was vaulted into the national television limelight and ultimately won with a bogey on the 24th hole.

Whyte’s high scores kept piling up at Concession: An opening 81. Followed by an 85. And then a 94. And an 82. Four days of stroke play, and not once did her score count toward Baylor’s team total.

Of the 84 players who finished four rounds here, Whyte was dead last, 54 over par, 57 shots behind winner Emma Talley.

“She was down,” head coach Jay Goble conceded.

“It’s really been hard for her,” Davis said.

The closest to Whyte in the individual standings was Duke freshman Lisa Maguire, who has endured her own struggles this season. And incredibly, both Baylor and Duke’s fates came down to those two players Tuesday during the semifinals of the NCAA Women’s Championship.

The day was spiced up a bit by controversy when Duke's Leona Maguire found herself in the middle of a rules controversy after making gestures to her coach and teammate about a hole location. It turned out she was trying to tell them the committee had the wrong hole location sheet and after an investigation, Maguire was cleared of wrongdoing because the hole location sheet was, in fact, woefully wrong.

From Lavner's report:

After playing her 10th hole at Concession in the afternoon semifinals, Maguire said she motioned back down the fairway that the hole location was in a different spot on the green than what was shown on the pin sheet.

The rules staff had marked that the cup was 21 paces deep and 10 from the right. It was actually cut 9 on and 7 from the right.

“We just screwed that one up,” NCAA director of rules Jerry Lemieux said later. “We just gave players the wrong paperwork.”

The video of the incident and follow up from Lemieux:

Golf Channel airs Wednesday's Stanford-Baylor finale from 3-7 pm ET.