Santos In Title Hunt; Pepperdine Opens Ground On Zags
4/17/2013 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
BREMERTON, Wash. - Gonzaga University freshman Raychelle Santos will try to give the Bulldogs back-to-back medalists in the West Coast Conference Golf Championship when the final round unfolds Wednesday at Gold Mountain Golf Course.
Santos toured the 6,083-yard, par 72 Olympic Course layout in 1-over par 73 Tuesday to give her a 36-hole total of 144 and put her alone in third place She trails two-time WCC champion Grace Na of Pepperdine University by four strokes, Na putting together her second straight 70 in Tuesday's second round of the 54-hole event.
Gonzaga started Tuesday's round on the 10th hole and Santos opened with a bogey on the 352-yard 10th hole. She got back to even par with the first of her two birdies for the round on the 354-yard, par 4 15th hole.
At the turn she opened with bogeys on the first and third holes and birdied the 137-yard par 3 fifth hole before getting pars on her final four holes of the day.
"She's played well. She's just solid. Every day she is solid, she's in a good mood, she's fun to coach, goes about her business, listens and I'm proud of her. It's been fun to coach her her freshman year," Gonzaga head coach Brad Rickel said.
Santos said her game wasn't as good as it could have been Tuesday.
"Hitting was not on par today, but I really tried to grind it out to make every par I could. I didn't make as many birdies, and I made a few too many bogeys. In the end it was okay. It was the best effort I could do with what I had."
Santos is trying to follow in the footsteps of senior Victoria Fallgren who won the inaugural individual golf title in school history last year, claiming the crown on the first playoff hole.
But Rickel said her approach will be the same as it is every round.
"We don't talk about that stuff," Rickel said when asked how Santos would approach Wednesday in pursuit of an individual title. "You don't play against other people. It's a stroke play event. Some of the people you compete against aren't even in your group, there's no live scoring as far as she knows. We'll just go play golf. She's going to play this golf course to the best of her abilities and if I feel somewhere down the line the last couple of holes I need to tell her where she sits I will."
Santos said her approach game will have to be better in the final round.
"Tomorrow I'm going to try and put myself in the right spots on my approach shots, and when I can I'm going to try to make a birdie. I was in contention to make a lot of birdies today, but they definitely weren't rolling in so we'll see how it goes tomorrow."
Fallgren started quickly and ended well, but the middle of the round brought her down.
"The bookends of my round were really solid. I had eight pars in a row and finished with four pars in a row. The in-between just got away from me. I let myself get frustrated. I hit some putts in that stretch I thought I made but they just didn't fall so maybe they will fall tomorrow, hopefully," she said.
She said she tried not to put too much pressure on herself as the defending champion coming into this year's tournament.
"I tried not to because it's a completely different course and whole new climate. The brain doesn't hear the word no, so I probably did," she noted.
While the Bulldogs will have their eyes on Santos' bid for the title, the Zags will have a tougher time overtaking the 11-time defending champion Waves who are within reach of their 15th overall title in the 17 years of the WCC women's championship.
The Bulldogs shot a 301 Tuesday to go with Monday's 298 that left them at 599 and 17 shots behind the Waves in the team chase. Gonzaga is 22 strokes ahead of third-place BYU, making it equally tough for the Cougars to catch the Zags and it will be for the Zags to overtake the Waves.
The Waves opened the gap steadily throughout the day Tuesday as Gonzaga had just four birdies among its five golfers, but Rickel was discounting his team's effort.
"We're not making as many putts as we probably need to, but I thought we played hard," Rickel said of the lack of birdie production Tuesday. "We started out well again, played through nine holes about even par like yesterday when we played about 15 holes at even par. Then we hit a little lull where we went a little bit backwards for two or three holes. The wind was swirling on the second nine. We battled hard, but we gave away a few (strokes)," Rickel stated.
But Rickel isn't quite ready to start engraving Pepperdine on the trophy.
"Stranger things have happened. We just talked about it," he said moments after the Bulldogs finished play Tuesday. "All we can do is keep the faith and try to do what we do the best we've done it this week."
Fallgren, the team's senior leader, echoed those sentiments.
"Tomorrow we're all just playing our own ball. It's just us against the course and coming in and adding it all up," she said matter-of-factly.
Rickel said the Zags will come out Wednesday and try to improve on a couple areas of their game.
"We're going to work on a couple of things like have a little better speed on the greens and make sure from the first hole to the last hole that we just stay in our mindset. If we do that you never know. You can't control what the other team does in golf, and if we have the best day of the year tomorrow, who knows," he said.
Gonzaga matched Pepperdine with four players among the top 10. With Santos holding a 4-stroke lead for third over BYU's Lea Gamer, Fallgren is tied for sixth at 151, Han Wu is eighth at 152 and Alice Kim in ninth at 154. Genavive 'Genna' Dodge, who turned in a solid 76 Monday, shot 80 Tuesday as she double-bogeyed two of the first three holes and couldn't convert birdie opportunities to get her game back on track.
