STANFORD, Calif. — Stanford women’s golf became the first team in nearly a decade to reach the NCAA Championship match play finals for the second consecutive year, falling just short of defending its national title in an otherwise dominant 2024-25 season.
Cover-to-Cover
Stanford has finished first in every stroke-play tournament it played this season. It began at The Molly Invitational, where Stanford finished as the only team under par and won by 18 strokes, with Paula Martín Sampedro earning her first collegiate win in the process. That kick-started an elite stretch of golf for the defending national champions, with the Cardinal winning nine stroke-play tournaments and going 6-2 in match play. In the fall, Stanford earned additional tournament wins in the Stanford Intercollegiate and the Nanea Invitational, while winning the San Diego State Classic, Juli Inkster Invitational, and Charles Schwab Women’s Collegiate in the spring portion of the regular season.
Not only did Stanford finish first in stroke play throughout the season, but it also won comfortably in most tournaments. Only two of Stanford’s nine stroke-play wins this season were by fewer than eight strokes, and Stanford closed out the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Championship as the top seed after beating No. 5 Oregon by an impressive 21 strokes, setting the NCAA 72-hole scoring record. On ten occasions this season, Stanford had a stroke-play round of 10-under or better, including an 18-under 270 in the third round of the NCAA Championship, shattering the previous NCAA Championship scoring record Stanford set in 2022.
Deepest Team in the Country
Stanford’s lineup was the deepest in the country, with four different individual winners during the 2024-25 season, all of whom were First Team All-America selections. Two golfers (Paula Martín Sampedro and Andrea Revuelta) won twice. Stanford’s fifth golfer, Kelly Xu, had a scoring average of 71.25, the highest of the season by a Cardinal despite being the 11th-best in a single season in program history. That means all five Stanford golfers held top-11 single-season scoring averages this year.
For the second year in a row, all five in the lineup received All-America honors from both WGCA and Golfweek. Anne Walker also took home Golfweek Women's College Golf Coach of the Year honors, her first win of the award in her career.
Title Defense
Stanford came one hole away from defending its national championship, dropping the NCAA Championship match play finals 3-2 to Northwestern on the 18th green. It wrapped up an incredibly thrilling stretch of match play that saw Stanford overcome near losses along the way to reach the finals for the second year, the first team to do so since the Cardinal did it during the first two years of the match play format in 2015 and 2016.
After pacing the field by 21 strokes, Stanford opened match play with a 3-1 win over Virginia, flipping a pair of matches into their favor late to pull ahead and win. That set up a highly anticipated semifinal match against Florida State, anchored by the top two amateurs in the world: Mirabel Ting and Lottie Woad. Three different individual matches went into a playoff, with Stanford needing to win just one to close it out. Megha Ganne was pitted against Lottie Woad in the best match of the day, going to a 20th hole where Ganne prevailed, sending Stanford to the finals.
In the finals, Stanford took the first point over Northwestern before the Huskies rattled off a pair of quick wins, including one on the 18th hole, to take a 2-1 lead. Stanford then needed to flip its last two matches to win the championship. Kelly Xu overcame a one-hole deficit with three to play to win, but Andrea Revuelta dropped hers on the 18th green to clinch it for Northwestern. There has not been a repeat NCAA champion since Duke from 2005-07.
Following Fellow Freshmen
In 2021, Rachel Heck was the NCAA individual champion. In 2022, Rose Zhang was the NCAA individual champion. In 2024, Paula Martín Sampedro was the WGCA Co-Freshmen of the Year and finished third at the NCAA Championship. What did they have in common? They were freshmen.
This year’s freshmen class was the best in the nation, and Meja Örtengren and Andrea Revuelta are led the charge. Both were finalists for this year’s ANNIKA Award, two of just three freshmen to be named finalists. Both earned several big honors over the course of the season.
Örtengren turned heads all season long. Her scoring average of 70.11 was the third-best freshman scoring average in Cardinal history, trailing only freshmen NCAA individual champions Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck. This spring, she won her first tournament, claiming the San Diego State Classic title by eight strokes, the largest win in Stanford history. Örtengren finished in the top-10 in every tournament and tied the Stanford record of 10-under in a round with a 62 in her win in San Diego. She was named ACC Freshman of the Year and WGCA Freshman of the Year as a result.
There was no hotter golfer in the country than Andrea Revuelta during a five-week span in the spring. After missing most of the spring due to injury, Revuelta came back to win the ACC individual championship, tying the ACC Championship scoring record of 14-under. She backed up her first collegiate win by claiming individual medalist honors at the NCAA Norman Regional, becoming the first Cardinal to win consecutive postseason tournaments since Rose Zhang in 2023.
Two-Time Winners Aplenty
Entering the season, there had been just 10 Cardinal to win multiple collegiate tournaments. Entering the NCAA Championship, that number stands at 13, as Megha Ganne, Paula Martín Sampedro, and Andrea Revuelta all secured their second career wins to join that esteemed group of golfers.
Ganne was able to fight off a pair of teammates in Meja Örtengren and Kelly Xu, plus Farah O’Keefe of Texas, to win the Nanea Invitational on Oct. 30, 2024. She did so with a birdie on 18 to ice the field and win by one stroke. The 2024-25 season has been one to remember for Ganne, as she enters the NCAA Championship as the program’s all-time leader in scoring average at 71.30 (minimum of 75 rounds).
Both wins for Martín Sampedro came this season, as she began her year with a win at The Molly Invitational and then added a second win at the Juli Inkster Invitational. She became the first Cardinal with multiple wins in a season since Rose Zhang in 2023.
Revuelta was last to the party, with postseason medalist honors at the ACC Championship and NCAA Norman Regional. Those first two collegiate wins put her in special territory, as she became the first Cardinal since Rose Zhang in 2023 to win a conference championship and a regional title in the same season.
All Cardinal at Augusta
The 2025 Augusta National Women’s Amateur featured a heavy dosage of Cardinal red as six current, one former, and one future Stanford golfer were invited to this year’s event at Augusta National. The current Cardinal were Megha Ganne, Paula Martín Sampedro, Meja Örtengren, Andrea Revuelta, Nora Sundberg, and Kelly Xu. Rachel Heck also participated in this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur, her fourth and final appearance. Over the last two years, Stanford has had an incredible 17 current/former/future golfers in the field, by far the most of any program in the country.
Six Cardinal made the cut to the final round, also the most in the country. Revuelta finished tied for fourth at 8-under and Ganne tied for seventh at 7-under. Ganne made ANWA history by shooting a 9-under 63 in her opening round, the lowest round in ANWA history.