Papp helps Texas jump in front in opening round of NCAA Championship at Grayhawk

    It seemed that Kaitlyn Papp, Texas’ gifted senior home girl from Austin, Texas, had struggled a little in the wake of the gritty performance that earned her low-amateur honors in the unusual December U.S. Women’s Open at the Champions Golf Club in Texas.

   Papp had played in the final group in Saturday’s third round at Champions and you could certainly argue that playing in the final group of a women’s professional major championship on the weekend is somewhere near the summit of the game.

   She was playing in the final group of a U.S. Women’s Open in her home state, not all that far from the college of her choice, UT being kind of big throughout the big state Texas. So yeah, the spotlight was pretty bright.

   And Papp never seemed to shrink in that bright spotlight. Papp shot a pair of 74s to finish in a tie for ninth place with defending champion Jeongeon Lee6, Inbee Park and the sisters Jutanugarn, Ariyaa and Moriya. Three of those four are major champions and it says here Moriya is going to get one one of these days. Pretty heady company.

   I have to think that deep freeze the state of Texas got plunged into in February didn’t help any of the teams in that part of the country at a time when the spring golf seasons were just getting back in the groove after a fitful year that saw the coronavirus pandemic force the premature end of the 2019-2020 season and continue to create havoc through the fall of 2020.

   I think I mentioned after Texas finished in fifth place in the Big 12 Championship last month at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas that if the Longhorns could figure out a way to get into the eight-team match-play bracket at the NCAA Championship, they would be a tough out with Papp and Agatha Laisne, a talented senior from France and No. 66 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), in the lineup.

   With Papp, the top American in the Women’s WAGR at No. 7, carding a 2-under-par 70 in Friday’s opening round of the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., Texas took a big first step toward reaching that goal of being one of those last eight teams standing when match play gets under way Tuesday.

   The Longhorns put together a 1-over 289 over the 6,384-yard, par-72 Grayhawk layout to take a one-shot lead following the opening round of the NCAA Championship Friday. Grayhawk was supposed to make its debut as an NCAA Championship site a year ago. National championship week was one of the many casualties of the pandemic on 2020’s sporting calendar and it was missed.

   No. 13 Oregon, out of the Big 12, was a shot behind Texas in second place with a solid 2-over 290.

   The Pac-12’s Stanford, ranked sixth and coming off a victory as the host team in the Stanford Regional last week, was another shot behind Oregon in third place with a 3-over 291 total. The Cardinal were led by Rachel Heck, a freshman from Memphis, Tenn. and No. 25 in the Women’s WAGR who grabbed the individual lead with a 3-under 69.

   Heck was coming off individual victories in the Pac-12 Championship and in the Stanford Regional, both on her home course, the Stanford Golf Course. Heck, who arrived on the college golf scene with a glittering junior record, is clearly on a roll.

   No. 2 Duke and No. 4 Wake Forest, the Atlantic Coast Conference rivals who met in the Final Match in the last NCAA Championship contested in 2019 at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark., were two of the four teams tied for fourth place at 4-over 292. The Blue Devils edged Wake Forest, 3-2, to capture the national championship at The Blessings.

   Perennial Mid-American Conference power Kent State, ranked 16^th, and another Pac-12 power, No. 22 Arizona, rounded out the quartet tied for fourth at 4-over. Lisa Strom, the 1994 PIAA champion as a senior at Lansdale Catholic, is in her second season as the head coach at Kent State and this is her first appearance in the NCAA Championship guiding the Golden Flashes.

   No. 3 LSU and No. 5 Mississippi, two of the teams that advanced out of the Baton Rouge Regional based on their seedings after relentless rains forced the tournament to be cancelled, were tied for eighth place, each landing on 8-over 296. The Tigers and the Rebels represent the Southeastern Conference.

   Big 12 champion Oklahoma State, ranked seventh, rounded out the top 10, the Cowgirls registering a 9-over 297 that left them a shot behind LSU and Ole Miss.

   There will a cut following Sunday’s third round to the top 15 teams and the eight survivors following Monday’s final round will make it to the match-play bracket.

   Laisne backed up Papp for Texas as she was one of 14 players who matched par at Grayhawk with a 72 and were tied for fifth place in the individual standings.

   Laisne has a pretty strong amateur record of her own, including a victory in the 2017 European Ladies Championship the summer before she arrived in Austin. Laisne also teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Open at Champions in December, although she failed to make the cut.

   Sophie Guo, a sophomore from Orlando, Fla. and No. 64 in the Women’s WAGR, added a 1-over 73 for Texas and was among the group tied for 19^th place. Sara Kouskova, a junior from the Czech Republic and No. 57 in the Women’s WAGR, was the final counter for Texas with a 2-over 74 that left her in the group tied for 38^th place.

   Ashley Park, a freshman from Irvine, Calif., rounded out the Texas lineup as she struggled to an 8-over 80 and ended up among the group tied for 114^th place.

   Stanford’s Heck made the cut and played the weekend in the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. as a 15-year-old. Just before arriving at Stanford, Heck claimed medalist honors in qualifying for match play in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md.

   But Stanford, like many Division I schools, did not compete last fall with the pandemic continuing to rage out of control. Heck got off to a slow start when the Cardinal started playing again in February.

   But the Rachel Heck everybody thought they’d see at the college level has resurfaced in the last month. She ripped off four birdies on the front nine at Grayhawk Friday at the second, fourth, fifth and eighth holes to get it to 4-under. The lone blemish on her card was a bogey at the 10^th hole, but Heck grinded out eight straight pars to finish her round.

   Oregon’s Briana Chacon, a sophomore from Whittier, Calif., and Baylor’s Elodie Chapelet, a senior from France, finished a shot behind Papp in a tie for third place at 1-under 71. Heck, Papp, Chacon and Chapelet were the only players to better par on the tough Grayhawk layout.

   UCLA’s Emma Spitz, a sophomore from Austria and No. 15 in the Women’s WAGR, was also part of the logjam tied for fifth place at even-par 72. Spitz was coming off an individual victory in the Louisville Regional at the Louisville University Golf Club.

   Heck and Spitz were two of the six players who finished in a tie for third place in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship in early April.

   Kent State’s pair of standouts from England, sophomore Caley McGinty, No. 72 in the Women’s WAGR, and junior Emily Price, were both among the group at even-par.

   Also in that group at even-par were two holdovers from the Final Match in 2019 at The Blessings, Duke’s Jaravee Boonchant, a senior from Thailand and No. 50 in the Women’s WAGR, and Wake Forest’s Siyun Liu, a graduate student form China and No. 65 in the Women’s WAGR.

   Heck’s Stanford teammate, Sadie Englemann, a freshman from Austin, Texas, also landed in the group at 72. Chacon’s Oregon teammate, Hsin-Yu (Cynthia) Lu, a freshman from Taiwan, also posted a 72.

   Rounding out the group tied for fifth place were Michigan State’s Valery Plata, a junior from Colombia and No. 76 in the Women’s WAGR who made a run to the semifinals in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont, Kentucky’s Laney Frye, a freshman home girl from Lexington, Ky., South Carolina’s Paula Kirner, a freshman from Germany, Oklahoma State’s Maddison Hinson-Tolchard, a freshman from Australia, Arizona’s Gile Bite Starkute, a sophomore from Lithuania, and Virginia’s Beth Lillie, a senior from Fullerton, Calif.

   Duke freshman Phoebe Brinker, a Wilmington, Del. native and an Archmere Academy product, carded a solid 1-over 73 in her NCAA Championship debut to join the group tied for 19^th place.