At the 2026 NCAA Division I National Championship, some of the biggest names in the sport had huge days Saturday.
One of those names is María José Marin from Arkansas, the 2026 Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion and defending NCAA Division I National Champion. After struggling the first day with an even par round, she was fantastic Saturday, shooting a bogey-free -4. Her round helped propel Arkansas into the top four and safely within the projected cut line.
The individual title should be interesting, with 11 players within three strokes of the lead with two days left to play. At the top, sitting at -6 are Texas star Farah O’Keefe, Kajsalotta Svarvar and Stanford’s Meja Örtengren. Megha Ganne from Stanford, the leader after the first round, is one back at -5.
The team leaderboard is dominated, unsurprisingly, by Stanford and USC, the top two ranked teams in the country and clearly the schools with the most talent top-to-bottom. Stanford is being led mostly by the duo of Örtengren and Ganne, but No. 2 amateur Paula Martín Sampedro had a bit of a bounce back on Saturday with a -1 score. Expect her and Andrea Revuelta to improve over their first two days.
Three strokes back of the Cardinal is USC, whose power trio of Catherine Park, Bailey Shoemaker and Jasmine Koo is a combined -7 for the week thus far.
While Stanford sits at -12 and USC at -9, only one other team is under par, No. 21 ranked Oklahoma State at -7 through three rounds. It seems clear that OSU is a lock to not only make the cut, but probably the match play portion as well.
The third round will cut the field of 30 in half to 15, before being cut once again to just eight teams for the match play portion of the event after Monday.
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