Women’s Golf

After a disappointing ninth place finish in its home tournament two weeks ago, Northwestern got back on track with a solid third-place finish at the Stanford Intercollegiate, which concluded Wednesday.

It was the Wildcats’ third top-5 finish of the year in the four tournaments the team has competed in this season, and coach Emily Fletcher singled out the home competition as the outlier.

“We weren’t our best at Windy City, and we really played OK the first couple events, nothing spectacular but pretty solid,” Fletcher said. “We were disappointed, but this was a solid performance, aside from the first round.”

Senior Hannah Kim led the way for NU, finishing third in the individual competition at 5-under-par. Kim came out firing from the start, birdieing the third hole in the first round and never looking back en route to a first round 66, the lowest round shot by any golfer in the entire tournament.

Kim came into the final day with a four-shot lead, but her 1-over final round, combined with two 4-under rounds from challengers, dropped her to third.

“It was really nice to start the tournament that way,” Kim said. “I didn’t expect to shoot a score like that, so just starting the tournament like that really helped. I just made sure not to jump ahead, grinding it down to one shot and giving it my all really helped me.”

Kim wasn’t the only Cats senior to finish in the top 10, as senior Sarah Cho also turned in an impressive scorecard to finish tied for eighth.

Cho had a much more up-and-down tournament, struggling in the first round but pulling things together during the last two days. In round two alone, Cho bogeyed five of the first 10 holes, but birdied four of her final eight to climb back into contention.

“I was just thinking, ‘OK, the second nine, you just need to be more patient,’” Cho said. “Also I would say the back nine was a little more scorable just because there were a couple holes that were shorter than the front nine.”

Sophomore Brooke Riley turned in a top-30 finish of her own, tying for 23rd in her fourth tournament as part of the scoring team. While junior Janet Mao and Riley were able to bounce back from disappointing opening rounds, junior Stephanie Lau continued to struggle and eventually finished tied for 39th in the 74-person field.

Overall, Fletcher said she was pleased by the performance, specifically the Cats demonstrating the ability to recover after a difficult start.

“It’s encouraging,” Fletcher said. “It’s something we can build on before next week when we got to East Lake. They showed a lot of resilience out there.”

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Twitter: @joe_f_wilkinson