Card Litters the Leaderboard in Norman – Stanford Cardinal

NORMAN, Okla. — The opening rounds of the Norman Regional took place on Monday at Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club, home of Oklahoma Sooners golf. With multiple weeks off after the ACC Championship, top-seeded Stanford women’s golf returned to action as the defending NCAA champions. They played like it during the opening 36 holes of golf, pacing the field thanks to a fast start in the first round.

The Cardinal was the only team to find success in the early portion of the morning. Stanford shot 12-under as a team in the first round, its eighth round of 10 or more strokes under par this season. That staked Stanford to an 11-stroke lead, one it would not relinquish throughout the afternoon. Through two rounds, Stanford sits at 16-under with a five-stroke lead over Northwestern.

By shooting 12-under as a team in the first round, Stanford became the first team since 2023 to shoot 12-under in the first round of a regional and just the seventh team all-time to do so. Cardinal fans remember 2023 well as Stanford opened the Pullman Regional 21-under par in the first round en route to an NCAA record 50-under for the tournament.

Continuing a recent trend in the lineup, the freshmen were leading the way for the Card. For much of the day, it was Meja Örtengren and Andrea Revuelta atop a crowded leaderboard, with Örtengren pulling away late to earn a share of the lead through round two. The freshman from Sweden shot a 4-under 68 in the opening round, including a clean back nine with three birdies, before also adding three birdies on the back nine of her second round, where she finished with a 1-under 71. Eight golfers are within two strokes of the lead, including Örtengren.

The other freshman vying for the lead was Andrea Revuelta, the ACC individual champion, who matched Örtengren with a 4-under 68 in the opening round to gain a share of first. She cooled off in the second round after three consecutive bogeys from holes 6-8 in round two but rebounded with back-to-back birdies to keep herself in the top-10. She finished her second round with a 1-over 73, snapping a streak of six-straight rounds in the 60s. Still, Revuelta sits in a tie for seventh.

The other Cardinal in a tie for seventh is Paula Martín Sampedro, who continued to be the steady presence in the middle of Stanford’s lineup that she has been for nearly two years. She shot a 2-under 70 in the opening round and closed out her second round with a birdie on 18 to finish at 1-under. In 23 rounds this…