Scottsdale, Arizona. – While playing a tight match towards the end, Brianna Navarrosa looked across the green to see the world’s best amateur ball near the hole.
The little Southern California girl kept her composure, as she had done all day, confidently belting her long throw and watching it drop before Rose Chang had a chance to make her birdie.
With the final tie, Navarrosa finished off Zhang’s team and clinched USC’s 3-1 victory over defending champion Stanford in the NCAA women’s golf semifinals on Tuesday.
“I didn’t know how important that was, especially when I was 17, but I knew I had to,” Navarrosa said. “And I stood over it, and I was like, ‘This is going in the hole.'”
Wake Forest defeated Texas A&M 3-0 in the other semi-final to earn its second trip to the National Final.
Zhang capped off one of the greatest rounds in NCAA history on Monday, becoming the first woman to win multiple national championships in golf with Her second consecutive singles title. The 20-year-old sophomore on Wednesday matched with former Arizona golfer and LPGA Hall of Famer Lorena Ochoa who has eight wins in a season and 12 in her career.
Zhang also won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in April.
Zhang dominated her morning quarterfinal match, but it was a far cry from the afternoon.
“I think the whole thing just caught my eye,” Zhang said. “Nothing was going right and everything just felt like a blur.”
USC pulled ahead when Christine Wang beat Brooke Seay 2 and 1 and Cindy Kou beat Stanford Megha Ganne by the same score. Freshman Kelly Xu got Stanford on the board with a 2-and-1 win over national runner-up Katherine Park.
With Stanford’s Sadie Engelman 2 leading through 16 holes against Amare Avery, the Cardinals needed Zhang to overcome a 2-down deficit over the final four holes at Grayhawk Golf Club.
Navarrosa didn’t give the singles champion a chance, finishing 2 wins and 1 with a tie for 17th.
“I’ve never felt this nervous on the golf course,” USC coach Justin Silverstein said. “But we pulled it off.”
Stanford beat Pepperdine 3-1 in the quarterfinals on Tuesday morning, and Southern California beat South Carolina by the same scoreline.
Zhang led the quarterfinals at Stanford with a 6&5 win over Reyes Guzmán.
But in the afternoon tie-breaker, Zhang lost the opening hole with a double bogey and was down 3 at the turn after hitting a fairway bunker. Zhang sank a long birdie on No. 14 to land a 2 out, but Navarrosa matched it up the stretch to send the Devil Deacons into the title match.
Wake Forest, the national runner-up in 2019, won a school-record five championships this season and beat Florida State 3-1 in the morning quarterfinals.
Emilia Miliasio cruised to eagle fourth in the sixth on her way to beating Zoe Slaughter 2-and-1 of Texas A&M in Game 1 of the afternoon.
Two-time ACC Player of the Year Rachel Cohn beat Texas A&M’s Hailey Cooper 4, 2.
Mimi Rhodes took a 1-up lead over Blanca Fernandez Garcia-Pogio at par on the 13th, and they traded pars over the next four holes. Rhodes clinched Wake Forest’s spot in the title game after Garcia-Poggio hit a green bunker and missed a short birdie kick in the 15th inning.
“She was getting up from a lot of places and the coach said we needed the last game,” Rhodes said. “I just thought I needed to push, do something on the last hole and hope it all worked out.”