EUGENE, Ore. – Junior Taylor Totland (+4) shot even par to lead the 19th-ranked Furman women’s golf team Saturday in the second round of the 2016 NCAA Championships at the par 72, 6,369 yard Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore. The Paladins (+19) concluded the day tied for 22nd.
Totland, who earned All-American honorable mention accolades in 2015, recorded four birdies, including two in her last five holes, to finish the round in a tie for 67th. Miami’s Dewi Weber (-9) took the individual lead after scoring a 66 on Saturday. Weber’s two-day total of 69-66=135 gives her a one-stroke advantage entering Sunday’s third round.
Freshman Haylee Harford (+4), the 2016 SoCon Freshman of the Year, birdied No. 14, scoring a 77 to tie for 67th with Totland, while sophomore Alice Chen (+5), the 2016 SoCon Co-Player of the Year, added four birdies to card a 2-over 74 and tie for 80th. Senior Valentina Romero (+7) birdied No. 17 to tie for 94th after shooting a 75 in the second round, and sophomore Jacqueline Bendrick (+8) notched three birdies on the day to tie for 101st with a 76.
No. 2 Southern California (-7) surged into the lead after leading the field with a 280 on Friday. No. 13 Washington (-2) is five strokes back in second, while third-ranked UCLA (+1) is third. No. 12 Stanford (+2) sits in fourth, and eighth-ranked Oklahoma State (+3) and No. 20 Oregon (+3) are tied for fifth.
“It was a little bit of a struggle today,” said Furman head coach Kelley Hester, the 2016 SoCon Coach of the Year, who is in her fourth year at the helm of the Paladin program. “We would get a few shots then give a few back, but the girls fought hard. We didn’t seem to have putts drop when we needed them to in order to make the move that we needed to make today.”
The Paladins will tee off of No. 10 at 1:06 p.m. PT on Sunday in a group with No. 47 Michigan and will play in twosomes since No. 26 Brigham Young completed round three on Thursday because of accommodations due to religious reasons.
Furman is part of a 24-team field that is playing under the NCAA Championship’s revised format, which was instituted last year. The teams are playing 54 holes of stroke play over the course of three days, concluding on Sunday. The top 15 teams will then play one additional round of stroke play on Monday. The top eight teams at the end of Monday’s round will move into the match-play single elimination bracket. Tuesday will feature the quarterfinals and semifinals, and the finals will be played Wednesday afternoon.