“I feel like I have a lot more control over the mental side of it,” she said. “I had a double and a bogey back-to-back on 4 and 5 (her 13th and 14th holes of the day), so I didn’t let that get to me at all. I actually ended up with birdieing the last three holes. So I feel like that kind of shows the way my game has matured from last year.”
A shot behind Woad and Romero are Ganne, Kansas State’s Carla Bernat Escuder (68) and Stanford’s Andrea Revuelta (66). Ganne came back to the field after her record-setting first round, but she didn’t view it as the grind that the scorecard showed it to be.
“It was a lot of good stuff. Hit a lot of really good shots,” said Ganne, who bounced back from a 2-over front nine to work three birdies around two bogeys on the back. “Didn’t hit anything that I wasn’t like super like upset about, but just wasn’t in great position. Handled it really well. Tried to create momentum within holes and grinded it out for what I thought was a pretty good 73.”
Bernat Escuder, a senior from Spain, is at 8 under after her second consecutive 4-under, capped by a birdie-birdie finish. Her countrywoman Revuelta, a freshman, jumped into the fray after a near-perfect round that included only one bogey against seven birdies.
“I think my game has been really, really good yesterday and today,” she said. “I think that yesterday it was a great round. I mean, 2 under is pretty good. But I think that I did play better than that and my game was ready. I just had to stay patient for today, and today it happened. It really reflected on how my game is right now. I’m really happy about that.”
Two shots back sit another Stanford Cardinal, Swedish junior Meja Örtengren (69), and Asterisk Talley (66), the 16-year-old who won the 2024 Junior Invitational at Sage Valley. Talley birdied five of six holes from Nos. 9-14 to post one of the best rounds in tournament history and vault into contention.
“I’m feeling good,” she said. “Going into this round I knew I had to fire some scores today because, before I came into today, I was sitting close to the cut line. So I knew I had to play some good golf to make the cut. I started off pretty steady on the front nine, and then I caught some fire on the back.”
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