Moore's putt on the 19th hole lifts Arizona to a national championiship

   When Haley Moore’s birdie putt dropped to give her a 19^th-hole victory over Alabama’s Lakareber Abe, Arizona had defeated the Crimson Tide, 3-2, and run the gauntlet to win its first national championship since 2000.

   Maybe match play isn’t the fairest way to determine a national champion – like golf is a fair game to begin with – but it certainly is dramatic.

   And you just can’t take anything away from what the Wildcats, No. 9 in the latest Golfstat rankings, accomplished in the last three days at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stilllwater, Okla.

   Just getting into the match-play bracket was something of a minor miracle as Bianca Pagdanganan, the Wildcats’ emotional leader this week, dropped in a tough, downhill slider for eagle on the 18th hole to get Arizona into a playoff with Baylor for the final spot in match play.

   Birdies by Pagdanganan and Yu-Sang Hou, a freshman from Taiwan, on the second hole of the playoff got Arizona in.

   All the Wildcats had to do then was beat UCLA, the No. 3 team in the country and the top seed in the match-play bracket, No. 5 Stanford, and last, and certainly not least, No. 1 Alabama.

   No matter who won the Final Match Wednesday, I was prepared to declare that team as the champion of one of the great seasons in the history of NCAA Division women’s golf. There were so many great teams and so many great players.

   Five of the eight players chosen to represent the United States in next month’s Curtis Cup Match against Great Britain & Ireland at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. were on those three teams that Arizona beat Tuesday and Wednesday.

   UCLA has two, Lilia Vu, the No. 1 player in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, and Mariel Galdiano, a veteran of the 2016 U.S. Curtis Cup team. Alabama has two, Lauren Stephenson, No. 6 in the Women’s WAGR, and Kristen Gillman, No. 11 in the Women’s WAGR. And Stanford has the other, Andrea Lee, No. 5 in the Women’s WAGR and, like Galdiano, a two-time U.S. Curtis Cup selection.

   Wake Forest’s Jennifer Kupcho of Wake Forest and No. 3 in the Women’s WAGR won the NCAA individual crown and will also represent the Stars & Stripes at Quaker Ridge.

   And that’s just the American girls. Lee’s teammate at Stanford, Albane Valenzuela, No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR, is from Switzerland. If you got to the end of Tuesday’s post, I made the case that Duke’s Leona Maguire, the pride of Ireland and No. 2 in the Women’s WAGR, might be the greatest women’s college golfer ever.

   I could go on, but you get the point. There was just an unprecedented amount of talent playing Division I women’s golf this year. And that makes the achievement by Arizona all the more impressive.

   The Wildcats, in winning their third national championship, kept it in the state, following up Arizona State’s eighth crown a year ago. And they kept in the Pac-12. Since the match-play format was adopted four years ago, the Pac-12 has won every one with Stanford capturing the 2015 title and Washington stunning the Cardinal in an all-Pac-12 final two years ago.

   “Arizona is my home, it’s where I went to school,” an ecstatic Laura Ianello, the head coach, told the Arizona website. “It needed to be back home. I’m proud I got to be the coach to bring it back.”

   Match play is as much about grit as it is about talent and Arizona showed its toughness all over the place in Wednesday’s Final Match.

   It started with Hou in the opening match, rolling to a 4 and 3 victory over Stephenson, a junior from Lexington, S.C.

   Alabama coach Mic Potter sent his Big Three out first with Gillman, a sophomore from Austin, Texas, and Cheyenne Knight, a junior from Aledo, Texas and No. 14 in the Women’s WAGR, following up Stephenson.

   Gillman, winner of the 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur as a 16-year-old, rolled to a 4 and 3 win over Gigi Stoll, a junior from Tigard, Ore., and, in probably the most anticipated match of the day, Knight cooled off the red-hot Pagdanganan, 4 and 2.

   Sandra Nordaas, a sophomore from Norway, might have had the biggest win in Arizona’s three-match march to the title when she claimed a 6 and 4 win over Stanford’s Valenzuela in the semifinals.

   Facing off against Angelica Moresco, a freshman from Italy, Nordaas led the whole way. Moresco battled hard, winning the 17^th hole to send the match to the final hole, but Nordaas made her 1-up advantage hold up.

   So it came down to Moore, the junior from Escondido, Calif., and Abe, the Tide’s senior from Angleton, Texas.

   Moore’s a junior, but she’s a young junior. She was still eligible to play in the U.S. Girls’ Junior last summer. She is a really good player, No. 22 in the Women's WAGR, and Ianello showed the ultimate faith in Moore by putting her in the anchor match.

   Moore took a 1-up lead to the 18^th tee, but Abe battled, sending the match back to the 18^th tee by winning with a two-putt birdie. But when Abe’s birdie try slid past the hole on the pair's 19th hole, the door was open for Moore and she did not miss.