Jersey Girl Ganne crashes the Pac-12 party in U.S. Women's Amateur semifinals at Old Waverly

   Megha Ganne, the 15-year-old from Holmdel, N.J. who is having a bustout summer, officially became the Pac-12 party-crasher Friday after earning a spot in the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at the Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss.

   I have theorized in recent years that the introduction of match play in the NCAA Championship has turned the college kids into much tougher competitors in that occasionally unfair format of that most unfair game supposedly invented by some masochistic Scottish shepherds or goat-herders or whatever they were.

   Andrea Lee of Hermosa Beach, Calif., for instance, did not, as one youthful entrant in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship a couple of weeks ago did, have to Google “match play” to try to figure out the rules after Lee qualified for match play this week at Old Waverly.

   Lee, a senior at Stanford and No. 2 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), staged a little clinic in match-play golf in dismissing precocious 16-year-old Lucy Li of Redwood Shores, Calif. and No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR, 6 and 5, in a U.S. Women’s Amateur quarterfinal Friday morning.

   Stanford has reached match play at the NCAA Championship in each of Lee’s three seasons with the Cardinal, but has yet to earn a national championship during that time. Lee has twice represented the United States in the Curtis Cup Match against Great Britain & Ireland, the first time in 2016 when the  ink on her high school diploma wasn’t dry yet, playing front of a rabid bunch of Irish golf fans at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in a loss for the Red, White & Blue and in resounding victory last summer at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y.

   Lee will take on Pac-12 rival Gabriela Ruffels of Australia, a junior at Southern California, in one of Saturday’s semifinals. Ruffels, playing some pretty good match-play golf herself these days, pulled off a late birdie blitz to get past Alabama senior Kenzie Wright of McKinney, Texas in her quarterfinal match Friday morning.

   Lee’s Stanford classmate Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland and No. 5 in the Women’s WAGR, will be in the other semifinal against Ganne, the Jersey girl whose 2019 got going with her fourth appearance in the Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals at Augusta National Golf Club the Sunday of Masters week.

   Since then Ganne has played in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston and shot a 62 in the second round on her way to a tie for sixth in the Girls Junior PGA Championship at the Keney Park Golf Course in Windsor, Conn.

   And now this. Ganne reached the semifinals with a 3 and 2 victory over Caroline Canales of Calabasas, Calif., an overachieving teen herself.

   You could argue that Ganne emerged from a soft spot in the match-play bracket, except it was Ganne who blew a hole in her quarter of the draw by taking out Duke sophomore Gina Kim of Chapel Hill, N.C., who rose to No. 21 in the Women’s WAGR after contending in the U.S. Women’s Open in Charleston, in the opening round of match play at Old Waverly.

   Ganne will face a huge challenge when she takes on Valenzuela, who claimed a 4 and 2 victory over Ohio State sophomore Aneka Seumanutafa of Emmitsburg, Md. in her quarterfinal match. Valenzuela reached the final of the 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur only to fall to Sophia Schubert.

   Valenzuela would like nothing more than to get another shot at having her name inscribed on one of the most iconic trophies in sports, the Robert Cox Cup. And, I have to admit, an intra-squad Stanford shootout between Valenzuela and Lee in the final is a very appealing prospect.

   Lee certainly didn’t find a soft spot in the match-play draw. She needed 23 holes to finally get past Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Fla., the most talented and experienced 14-year-old since, well, Lucy Li, in Thursday’s round of 16.

   Li wasn’t sneaking up on her fellow Californian in Friday’s quarterfinals. She had been Lee’s teammate on the U.S. team that crushed GB&I at Quaker Ridge in last year’s Curtis Cup Match and they had partnered in a winning four-ball match.

   But the 20-year-old Lee blew away her younger opponent by rattling off three straight birdies at the ninth, 10^th and 11^th holes to turn a 3-up lead into a 6-up runaway. Li got her only win of the day with a birdie at the 12^th, but it was too little, too late.

   Two springs ago, Ruffels was a freshman on a Southern Cal team that had four freshmen and a sophomore and made it to the semifinals of the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla.

   Ruffels is coming off a victory in the North & South Women’s Amateur Championship at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina.

   Ruffels trailed Wright, 1-down, after losing the 13^th hole to a par by Wright. But then Ruffels ripped off birdies at the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th holes and it was over.

   So it’s Stanford-Southern Cal in one semi and Stanford vs. the Jersey Girl in the other semifinal. The winners will go at it in a scheduled 36-hole final Sunday.