She shot a final round -7 65 to shoot up the leaderboard
If there is one thing that can be said about Minnesota Golden Gophers sophomore golfer Bella McCauley its that she is a closer. Two weeks ago McCauley shot a final round 64 to come from seven shots back to tie for the Big Ten Championship. This week she was at the Auburn Regional of the NCAA Tournament where once again, she went low on the final day. McCauley finished her three round tournament with a -7 65 ending the tournament in a tie for second place overall, but finishing as the top individual not on a team by a whopping 11 strokes to advance to the NCAA Championships for the second consecutive season.
McCauley started her regionals tournament off on a bit of a rough foot on Monday. She shot a +5 77 and was overall tied for 34th place and was in fourth place of the individuals, two shots back of Charleston’s Viktoria Hund. She started her crawl back up the leaderboard on Tuesday in the second round shooting an even par 72 to climb into a tie for 18th place overall, and in a tie for the top individual spot with Samford’s Gabi Nicastro. So McCauley knew she had some work to do in her third and final round on Wednesday to get back to the NCAA Championships.
And that she did. McCauley parred the first three holes before back to back birdies on the par four fourth hole and far three fifth hole. She would add a third birdie on the par 6 7th hole to go out in -3 and shoot up the leaderboard and clear of all the other individual entrants. She kept on her tear birdying the 10th, 13th 16th and 18th holes to finish seven under par for the round and recorded the lowest score of the tournament by any player by FOUR strokes.
McCauley will head to the NCAA Championships that well be held from May 17- 22 at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, California. She will be one of six individuals not on a team to qualify for the tournament. All 30 advancing teams and the six individuals will complete 54 holes of stroke play. Following 54 holes of competition, the top 15 teams along with the top nine individuals will advance for one additional day of stroke play to determine the top eight teams for match-play competition and the 72-hole stroke-play individual champion. A season ago McCauley finished at +7 through three rounds, five shots back of the cut line to advance to the final round.
Congrats to Bella on a great couple of weeks, and hopefully she can make some noise in California!