Stanford came within a shot of making the NCAA Championships, but the Cardinal was unable to overcome late round set backs and finished without a bid to the final tournament for the first time since 1988.

The NCAA West Regional was suspenseful down to the final hole. The top eight teams in the regional would advance to the championship, while the bottom 13 would be sent home. The Cardinal finished Saturday’s third round in a three-way tie for the eighth and final spot, which led to a one-hole playoff to determine which squad would move on.

“I think that as a whole we were very psyched going into the playoff. We were really excited because we were given another chance to prove ourselves,” said sophomore Catherina Wang.

No. 23 Stanford faced off against No. 36 Ohio State and unranked UC-Davis. The Cardinal and the Buckeyes both shot plus-one on the hole, but the Aggies trumped both teams: with a score of minus-one, UC-Davis won the playoff to claim the final bid to the NCAA Championships.

“Unfortunately we were unable to produce the results,” said Wang.

The playoff concluded a weekend where the Cardinal’s team scores fell in each round, which led to a subsequent fall in the rankings each day.

After the first round, Stanford sat in a tie for sixth place. Freshman Rebecca Durham — whose play had gotten steadily better as the season progressed — led the Cardinal with an even 72. Sophomore Angela King was right behind her teammate at plus-one.

Stanford’s solid play put the team in good position to grab a championship bid — this was further enhanced by the poor second day scores of No. 21 Michigan State, No. 18 California and No. 27 BYU, the three teams that the Cardinal was tied with after the first round.

But Stanford could not elevate or hold its standing: the team’s score fell by three shots, and left the Cardinal in seventh place.

This led to the final round where Stanford again could not better or maintain its score. That, combined with impressive comebacks by Ohio State and UC-Davis, left the Cardinal in a tie for eighth. The playoff ensued, and Stanford could not pull out a win.

Still, the Cardinal had a number of impressive individual performances throughout the weekend. King shot one-under-par in the final round, Stanford’s lone below-par score of the tournament. King finished the regional at one-over-par and in eleventh place in the individual rankings.

Durham entered the clubhouse at plus-five, a score good enough for her third top-25 finish of the year.

“Angela and Rebecca had a great tournament,” said Wang.

Wang ended at plus-nine, and junior Mari Chun, normally Stanford’s star, had one of her worst results of the year: she shot plus-13, overall.

Freshman Piper Miller, the final Stanford golfer, finished at plus-32.

“I believe Mari, Piper, and I were disappointed with our results because we definitely had the ability to do better but we didn’t live up to our expectations,” said Wang.

No. 2 USC, the Pac-10 champions, won the tournament by a staggering 15 shots — as a team, they finished nine-under. No. 4 Arizona State was a distant second, and No. 47 UNLV was even further off at third. UC-Davis was the only unranked team in the nation to advance to the NCAA Championship.

Stanford’s season now comes to a close, a disappointing follow up to last year, when the Cardinal won the West Regional and placed fifth in the championship tournament.

“As a team we did not fair as well as last year and definitely did not fair as well as we have hoped for,” said Wang. “However, we are a very young team and we have a lot of potential and we’re hoping to work harder and hopefully improve next year.”

Contact Wyndam Makowsky at makowsky@stanford.edu.