La Costa Dominance
Other than Stanford Who Loves Omni La Costa?
Everyone is back to zero and, at this point in the season, the rankings mean nothing — leaving The Differential searching for something to write about leading into the 2026 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Championships at Omni La Costa.
It took until the final round this evening, with Stanford’s streak of six consecutive stroke play victories at the NCAA Championship being mentioned nonstop, for the light bulb to finally go off.
How many teams have advanced to the fourth round of stroke play at all three NCAA Championships held at Omni La Costa — and what are their combined scores?
The answer: FIVE teams.
Stanford, Southern California, Arkansas, Texas, and Northwestern.
And Stanford has been astounding 55 shots better than the next closest team.
And the Individuals?
Thirteen individuals have played all 12 rounds of the NCAA Championship at Omni La Costa with the 2025 NCAA Champion, Arkansas’ Maria Jose Marin standing above the rest.
Marin’s finishes at the NCAA Championship (2024 - 2026) T4, 1st, 5th.
Stanford’s Megha Ganne is the only other individual to finish in the top-10 in all three Championships from 2024 - 2026. Ganne finished T10, T10, and 2nd today to finish her Stanford stroke play career for the Cardinal.
Notably two players played all 12 rounds without their team making the cut all three years - Patience Rhodes (Arizona State) and Taylor Riley (LSU).
The Differential Ranking
Our final rankings include only three rounds of the NCAA Championship.
A strength of the points method is it does allow to for the individuals to be ranked without everyone completing all four rounds.
But rather than adjusting players up or down based on who did and did not play Round 4 and fuding the total strokes, we’ve decided to use only the first three rounds for now and stay true to the purest data to match our methodology.