Birdies for Her: Stanford’s Golf Champions Win at Home, and Play for Something Larger

There is a particular kind of Sunday that Stanford does better than almost anyone. It does not involve a stadium or a television contract. It happens on a golf course in the foothills behind campus, where the defending national champions won again on home ground and then presented a check to a cancer researcher at the university’s own medical center.

That is what happened this weekend at the Stanford Intercollegiate, the tournament hosted by Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state and Stanford provost. Stanford’s women won the 54-hole event for the third consecutive season, shooting 824, 28 under par, to finish 19 strokes ahead of Virginia, according to Stanford Athletics. USC was third. The Cardinal led after every round of a 17-team field, and its players occupied the top three places on the leaderboard going into Sunday.

A Champion’s Pace

Meja Örtengren, in her third season on the Farm, took the individual title with rounds of 67, 65 and 67 for a 199, 14 under par. Stanford Athletics called it the second-lowest 54-hole score by a woman on Stanford’s course. She made birdies on her first two holes Sunday, surrendered the lead briefly to her teammate Andrea Revuelta, then made three straight birdies on the sixth, seventh and eighth holes and was not caught. It was her third collegiate victory, giving her at least one in each of her three seasons at Stanford.

Revuelta, who won the NCAA Stanford Regional on the same course in the spring, finished second at 11 under, giving Stanford the top two places at its own tournament for the second year in a row. Anna Song finished fifth at seven under, the best result of her career, and Nora Sundberg, playing as an individual, tied for sixth at five under, also a career best.

The result is worth reading against what came before it. Stanford had shot under par in only one of its first six stroke-play rounds this season, according to Stanford Athletics, and had finished last in a six-team field in Texas in September before winning a 12-team event in Illinois earlier this month. On Friday the team shot 271, 13 under. Whatever had been missing was found.

The Weight of a Title

Expectations for this program are not modest, and they should not be. In May, Stanford beat USC 4-1 in the match-play final at Carlsbad to win the 2026 NCAA championship, the program’s fourth national title and its third in five years, according to the NCAA. All four have come under head coach Anne Walker, beginning in 2015. The Associated Press noted that only Arizona State, with eight, and Duke, with seven, have won more. Megha Ganne, who won last year’s Intercollegiate, closed her Stanford career by winning the clinching match in Carlsbad.

A champion’s second season is a test of a different sort. The stars who defined last spring move on; the ones who remain must learn to carry the expectation themselves. This weekend suggested that Örtengren, Revuelta and Song are ready to do so. Before the tournament, Revuelta and Paula Martín Sampedro, another member of the championship lineup, ranked second and third in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, according to UCLA Athletics’ tournament preview.

Playing for Her

What makes the Intercollegiate unusual, though, is not the golf. In 2022, Walker started PlayForHer, a campaign that ties the tournament to breast cancer research: supporters pledge money for every birdie the field makes, or simply give. Walker explained the purpose to Golfweek in 2024: “the whole goal is just to bring awareness to these young women that it’s not an old person’s disease.”

By last week, the initiative had raised more than $620,000, according to UCLA Athletics. This year’s tournament honored Christine Romer, a former California golfer and breast cancer survivor, and Stanford Athletics reported more than $170,000 raised through PlayForHer. After Sunday’s final round the team presented the check to Dr. Melinda Telli at the Stanford Breast Care Center, whose research, Stanford Athletics said, focuses on aggressive and hereditary forms of breast cancer that often affect young people more than any other age group.

There is something fitting in that. The young women who play this game at the highest level are the very population Walker set out to reach, and their birdies are now, quite literally, paying for the science that protects them.

Pink at Maples

The same day, across campus, No. 16 Stanford volleyball wore white and pink jerseys for Breast Cancer Awareness Month and beat NC State 19-25, 25-11, 25-21, 25-19 at Maples Pavilion. Senior Julia Blyashov matched her career high with 21 kills, and freshman middle blocker Ella Andrews hit .769 with a career-best 10 kills, according to Stanford Athletics. The Cardinal is 12-6, 5-3 in the ACC, and unbeaten in six matches at home; Kevin Hambly’s teams are now 121-14 on the Farm.

What the Weekend Says

College sports have spent the last several years arguing about money, conferences and who will be able to afford what. Those arguments are real, and this publication will keep reporting on them. But a weekend like this one is a reminder of what the broad-based model is for. A golf team that wins national championships has also built, since 2022, a philanthropy that reaches into Stanford’s own medical center. A volleyball team that plays to a national standard put on pink and played for someone else.

The golfers travel to Hawai’i for the Nanea Invitational on Oct. 26-28, their last event of the fall, which Stanford has won in each of the past two seasons. Volleyball goes to Duke on Friday. Both teams will be judged, as they always are, by their results. This weekend, the results were excellent. So was the reason behind them.

Photo: Suiren2022 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0