For the second time in three years, the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Women’s Championship has been reduced to 54 holes because of weather.
Two years ago at Rich Harvest Farms, inclement weather shortened the scheduled 72-hole stroke-play competition. On Saturday, severe storms in the Fayetteville, Ark., area halted second-round play at 12:15 p.m. local time. No teams in Saturday’s morning wave had finished play while the afternoon wave never hit a shot.
The second round will resume at 10 a.m. Sunday with the morning wave resuming play and the afternoon wave starting off Nos. 1 and 10. The last tee time Sunday will be 11:50 a.m. The third and final round will take play Monday with the top 8 teams qualifying for match play. No preliminary cut to 15 teams will be made.
“With the severe weather threats that we monitored throughout Saturday afternoon, our committee came to the determination that, given the conditions, shortening the tournament to three rounds of stroke play heading into match play was needed to maintain the overall student-athlete experience and the integrity of the championships,” said NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Committee chair Ryan Colton. “We’re looking forward to the next two days of stroke play, where we have the opportunity to crown the individual champion, as well as determine the eight teams advancing to match play, which will begin Tuesday morning.”
Duke, 11 under through 16-18 holes, led USC by seven shots at 2 over when play was suspended.
“I was happy to see that we were able to get play in this morning,” Duke coach Dan Brooks said. “We weren’t sure what the weather was going to look like this afternoon but I told the girls that we would likely come off the course at least once, and we came close to that not happening. We’ll just have to see moving forward.”