A week ago, Baylor’s women were sitting on four season titles. They’d won more times than most teams have even teed it up this year as COVID kept the majority of teams sidelined in the fall.
Then a natural disaster compounded a global pandemic. In Waco, Texas, a historic winter storm dropped seven inches of snow on top of two inches of ice. Baylor went indoors.
Head coach Jay Goble didn’t even reset his lineup from the time Baylor won the SMU Trinity Forest Invitational on Feb. 2 to the time they teed it up on Feb. 22 for the Houston-hosted Icon Invitational at Golf Club of Houston (Texas). An extra practice round was a saving grace.
“We’d only been indoors and putting indoors,” Goble said. “Very different than playing on a championship golf course like Golf Club of Houston.”
Baylor played the first five holes in 6 over as a team, then clawed its way to 24 under by the end of 54 holes. LSU made a serious run at the Bears in the final round, but ultimately came up five shots short.
When Goble shook hands with LSU head coach Garrett Runion on Tuesday afternoon, he knew only that it would be close. Watching Golfstat mid-round can present an emotional rollercoaster for a coach, and Goble usually opts out of that.
LSU led by three shots as the two teams approached the turn and led by a shot entering the closing holes. Baylor reclaimed control with some well-timed freshman birdies. Britta Snyder birdied her last three holes, Hannah Karg birdied her final two and Rosie Belsham birdied three of her last six.
“One thing I know from this team, we’ve continued to battle adversity better than I’ve ever seen a team do,” Goble said. “The really cool thing for me to see this week is we’ve been snowed in for seven days and had temperatures below 0 last week and we didn’t play golf for seven days before Saturday.
“They’re so good that they legit figured out how to get their games back quickly.”
The more times Baylor wins, the more layers their story develops. Asked how outside expectations mount with each win, Goble admits that while it could be a factor for some teams on such a winning streak, it isn’t for Baylor. This is a team riding, as Goble says, “such a momentous high” that they find ways to win – even after a disastrous start, as the Bears proved in Houston.
“We don’t really talk about winning and losing – we haven’t had those conversations,” he said. “I don’t plan on having those conversations. We talk about taking care of controllables and we talk about doing what you can to be prepared.”
Control certainly will be a factor for any team that is going to find success in a season where COVID introduces all kinds of new variables. Baylor has effectively found five different ways to win this season.
“We’ve won coming from behind, we’ve won blitzing the field, we’ve won with one player playing really poorly or one player playing really great,” Goble noted.
So far, the scenery has been less varied. All five of Baylor’s tournament starts have come within Texas and Oklahoma. That changes next month when the Bears play the South Carolina Invitational in Columbia, South Carolina. Goble has already checked the forecast to find rain and sub-60 temperatures.
“Next week, it looks like we’re going to have some pretty adverse weather,” he said. “That’s another tool to put in our toolbox. Can we go play in tough conditions, play in tough weather against a really good field? Again find a way to shoot good scores and play good tournament golf?”
Back in 2015, when match play debuted at the NCAA Women’s Championship, Baylor played its way to the championship match. Stanford ended up carting off the national title after Mariah Stackhouse defeated Baylor’s Hayley Davis in extra holes of a memorable final match.
That Baylor team included All-Americans Davis and Dylan Kim (who later went on to star at Arkansas), plus Laura Lonardi and Giovana Maymon. The Bears had burst into national headlines by winning the Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge in the early spring. The Big 12 title and an NCAA Regional title followed.
This squad brings shades of that one – but better.
“I was lucky enough to coach a great team that year,” Goble said. “I see this team honestly as better than that team, and the biggest difference I see is I have a lot of players that golf is what they want to do in their future. They’re motivated to be the best.”
This Baylor squad is certainly deeper. In the spring of 2015, four players reliably contributed to the Baylor team score. Now, Goble’s roster includes seven players who average – in tournament rounds – 72.5 or better.
The current Baylor roster is also remarkably self-sufficient.
“I just ride around and clap a lot,” Goble joked.
In 2015, the national-title run taught Goble he has to find his place within the team too. Sometimes less is more.
“We have players who really, really want it who are really, really good,” he said of this year’s squad. “When you get that combination then you’re cooking with fire.”
The challenge is in keeping the fire burning.
