Bears Compete For Final Time Before Pac-12 Championships
The California women’s golf team travels north to Napa this week for the Silverado Showdown, its final tournament ahead of the Pac-12 Championships.
The Golden Bears are one of 17 teams set to tee off on Monday at the par-72, 6,146-yard Silverado Golf Course. The three-day competition is co-hosted by Colorado and Oregon, the latter being one of eight competing schools ranked in Golfstat’s top 25.
The Bears are coming off an 11th-place finish at last week’s PING/ASU Invitational. Junior Cristina Ochoa recorded her fourth top-20 finish of the season tying for 15th individually at 2-over par.
“I think the team has made a lot of progress and we really know what we have to work on with the weeks we have left,” Ochoa said. “It’s been a long season, a lot of fun, ups-and-downs, bad weather, great weather, but we’re just really excited and ready to put in the work. There are a lot of things we see that are trending in the right direction.”
Ochoa has been Cal’s low scorer this year with an average of 74.0 per round, a mark she has dropped even lower to 73.1 in spring competitions. She has finished in the top 20 in all four tournaments since the start of February, with her best performance coming at the Meadow Club Invitational in early March where she shot a 4-under 68 in round two and ended up tied for sixth individually.
“It’s been a great season. For me, the most important thing is consistency and just making the bad runs not too bad,” said Ochoa. “The key to my game has been my routine and my mindset of always going in, doing my best, and just doing the same things over and over again. I want to continue doing those same things.”
The Bogota, Colombia native returns to the lineup this week alongside mainstays Annika Borrelli (74.4) and Mika Jin (74.8), who own the second and third-lowest per-round season averages, respectively. Jin joins Ochoa as the only Bears to see action in every competition this season.
Freshman Olivia Lee is back in the lineup for the third time in four tournaments, as is senior Tzu-Yi Chang. Chang will be looking to pick up where she left off after sitting out last week in Arizona. Prior to that, she had back-to-back strong efforts in which she finished tied for second at the Causeway Invitational and 22nd at the Meadow Club Invitational.
The Bears will tee off at 8:45 a.m. on Monday.
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