Stanford freshman Meja Ortengren picked up her first career college victory on Tuesday at the San Diego State Classic.
Only 11 more to go to catch former Cardinal superstar Rose Zhang.
But Ortengren, the 20-year-old first-year player from Linkoping, Sweden, did a couple things this week at Bernardo Heights Country Club that not even Zhang could claim in her two seasons in school.
For one, Ortengren beat runner-up and teammate Paula Martin Sampedro by eight shots, believed to be a Stanford record and one stroke better than Zhang’s all-time best margin of victory, a pair of seven-shot victories.
Secondly, Ortengren’s second-round, 10-under 62 matches Mariah Stackhouse for the school record in relation to par – and is just a stroke shy of Stackhouse’s 61, set at the 2013 Peg Barnard Invitational and at the time an NCAA record. (North Carolina State’s Lauren Olivares posted 11-under 60 last year.)
Ortengren racked up 19 birdies in 54 holes, 10 coming in her 62. She has yet to finish worse than T-5 in four college starts. And her last non-top-10 in amateur and college competition came at last year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Once ranked ninth in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, she entered this week No. 17 and is surely poised to climb at least a few spots.
Stanford – the top-ranked team in the country, still unbeaten this season and winner of six straight stroke-play event dating to last spring – shot 31 under as a team to win by 32 shots over UNLV. That is three shots shy of Stanford’s program record for margin of victory, recorded at the 2022 Gunrock Invitational.
In addition to Ortengren and Sampedro, Kelly Xu (T-4), Megha Ganne (T-6) and individual Nora Sundberg (T-10) posted top-10s for the Cardinal.
Georgia, Oregon State and BYU rounded out the top five.
