The DI NCAA women’s golf tournament is on the horizon and conference tournaments are coming to a close.
The field for the 2022 tournament will be announced on April 27 at 4 p.m. ET on Golf Channel. 72 teams and 24 individuals will qualify for the regional round of the championship.
Here are four storylines to get you ready for the 2022 NCAA tournament:
Stanford and Oregon stay on top
Stanford and Oregon have been two of the best teams in the nation all season long. Stanford has the flash with top-ranked individuals up and down the roster while Oregon has been consistent from the start of the fall, all the way through the spring.
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The Cardinal have played in four team events and have yet to finish outside of the top three in any of them and beat San Jose State in a matchplay. Last year’s NCAA individual champion Rachel Heck has two wins this season all while world-No. 1 Rose Zhang has yet to finish outside the top-10 since winning all three of her fall events.
Although Oregon might not have the same amount of big names that Stanford does. The Ducks are still a consistent bunch. This season, they have 12 top-10 finishes and the majority of the time, it’s the same golfers out there.
With this consistency, Oregon won the Pac-12 championship by seven strokes over Oregon State in cold and wet conditions. That was the Ducks' third win of the spring with one coming at the Florida State Match-Up and the next coming at the Northrop Grumman Challenge.
South Carolina’s road to redemption
South Carolina has been knocking on the door for the past few years. Once again, the Gamecocks are in a position to make some noise this postseason.
South Carolina won two stroke-play tournaments and one matchplay in its five regular-season matches. The Gamecocks finished third in the stroke-play portion of the SEC championship but lost 3-2 in the quarterfinals of match play to Alabama.
Hannah Darling has stepped up in the latter half of the spring. Darling finished T2, T5 and T9 in her last three, including a 2&1 win over Alabama’s Polly Mack in the SEC quarterfinals.
San Jose State continues its Cinderella run
San Jose State is a team many didn’t see making this run before the start of the fall season. The Spartans finished 2021 with no wins and a ninth-place finish in the Stanford regional.
HISTORY: Check out the full history of the DI women's golf championship
This spring, they have four wins and the only time they didn’t win was a second-place finish at the MountainView Collegiate. Natasha Andrea Oon has led this team all spring with top-five finishes in every event. She won the Mountain West conference championship at ten under thanks to a 65 in the first round.
Wake Forest tries to make history
Wake Forest will attempt to become the first non-Duke ACC team to win the national championship. Only one other school in the ACC has a national title, Miami, but they weren’t in the conference in 1984.
The Demon Deacons won their second ACC championship in the last three seasons with a 3-1-1 win over Florida State. Rachel Kuehn has been the go-to player for her squad. She has yet to finish outside of the top 15 in a tournament and has played at 15-under par over her five tournaments this season.
