The new match play format adds drama, but also unpredictability to the year-end championships. While USC and Duke finished first and second over four days of stroke play, the perennial powers were bested by Stanford and Baylor, two programs playing for their first national championships today.
"Match play is unpredictable. When you play stroke play, there's four days and that's an endurance race," head coach Andrea Gaston said. "You know you have to play and you know there will be times where you're not playing you're best and you have to minimize your mistakes and try to make your bad day not too bad. But in match play, anyone can catch fire. Stanford is a great team and we give them credit. We really had to battle."
The Trojans are still a young team, but they will lose junior Annie Park, who announced that she will be turning pro this summer. Park is one of the program's most decorated players, collecting the 2013 NCAA Player and Freshman of the Year awards to go along with a school record six career individual titles, including the 2013 NCAA individual crown.
Sophomore Karen Chung went 2-0 during match play.
