FOLLOWING THE PLAN

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Jay Goble has seen the plan work so many times, it never surprises him when his Baylor women's golf team recovers from a slow start to make another postseason run.

But he admits that for the first time in his 13 years at Baylor, Goble actually "doubted that we were going to make postseason."

"It was looking grim for a long time, just because we couldn't get over the hump of getting more than one person to play well at once," said Goble, whose team placed 12^th or lower in four of its first five stroke-play tournaments this season.

"I've seen in the last two months the team that I've kind of expected to see all year. It was really cool to see them all start to play better at the same time. And again, I think going into nationals, we're playing as good as we've played. We're playing like a top-10 team in the country right now."

The Bears advanced to their ninth NCAA Championship in program history and eighth under Goble with a third-place finish at the Las Vegas Regional. One of three Big 12 teams to make the 30-team field, Baylor will be paired with Michigan State and Purdue in Friday morning's opening round at the newly redesigned La Costa Champions Course in Carlsbad, Calif.

"This is the thing that we work towards," Goble said. "We work towards getting our games ready to play our best golf at the end of the year. It's nice when a plan comes together, because we have not had a lot of great golf this year. But we have been trending for two months now. And then, to play some of our better golf at the end of the year was super exciting."

On a windy day when the average team score was 305, the Bears shot the best score in the final round of the Las Vegas Regional at 6-over 294, which was at least eight shots better than any of the other four advancing teams. Freshman Ashleen Kaur shot 3-under 69 and moved up to a tie for fourth with junior Sera Hasegawa, who recorded three-straight rounds of 1-under 71.

"We teed off at 8 o'clock, the wind's blowing over 20 mph, and I was just in my head. I was like, 'Wow, this is going to be some kind of day,''' Goble said. "I don't look at scoreboards while I'm out there, but I knew that we were playing well. And I was actually amazed when I finally did look at the scoreboard and saw how we did. . . . It was fun."

Senior Rosie Belsham, the first player in program history to make four-straight NCAA Championships, said this year's regional was the most satisfying, "other than maybe winning it (at) Stillwater (in 2022)."

Associate head coach Carly Ludwig had a note on the itinerary for that final day at the Las Vegas Regional: "Let's go punch the ticket to match play."

"This year, we've just kind of been like, 'OK, first job, make it to postseason,''' Belsham said. "Then, we made it to regionals. And then, it was like, 'Okay, we made it to nationals, next step is match play.'''

The 2015 NCAA runner-up, Baylor has made the eight-team match play twice. Last year, the Bears finished 17^th, two strokes off the 15-team cut after the third round. Averaging a team-best 72.3 strokes per round, Belsham is one of four returners off that team, joined by Hasegawa (72.34), junior BaiMai Seema (74.10) and sophomore Silje Ohma (74.81).

"Our message doesn't change throughout the year," Goble said. "We try to get a little better every day. We try to focus on scheduling our tournaments in a way that we peak at a certain time. I think the consistency of what we've done the last 13 years since I've been here has kind of been helpful. And it's worked out. So, I'm going to continue to try to schedule the same way and try to deliver the same message, even if it may become boring to my players."

Along with the rest of the 30-team field, Baylor is playing the newly designed La Costa Champions Course for the first time.

"There's not a whole lot of knowledge," Goble said. "I know what the courses looked like before. Apparently, they're still in the same footprint, just a different layout. . . . I don't think it's going to be extremely foreign to us. It's going to be getting used to speed of the greens, how the greens react when you hit shots into it and just seeing what our yardages are like."

Belsham, who graduated last weekend with a degree in health, kinesiology and leisure studies, said she hopes La Costa's new greens are "similar to what Ridgewood (Country Club) has been this year with new greens."

"I think that we have an advantage," Belsham said of playing most of their practice rounds at the newly designed course in Waco, "because we've had to adapt to that all of this year. But I think the fact that nobody's played it, it's a very level playing field, and may the best golfers win."

Baylor's players will tee off for Friday's opening round between 9:57 and 10:41 a.m. CT, with live scoring available at Golfstat.com.

FOLLOWING THE PLAN

Players Mentioned

Rosie Belsham

Sera Hasegawa

Ashleen Kaur

Silje Ohma

BaiMai Seema

Footer