MSU women's golfer Burnham off to NCAA Championships

EAST LANSING – Sarah Burnham wasn’t worried about a potential playoff in NCAA regional play. Her focus was solely on getting a quick bite to eat.

When she returned to Stanford Golf Course after two hours on May 7, everything fell into place perfectly. It was the Michigan State sophomore against UNLV’s Alexandra Kaui for the final individual spot in the NCAA Championships.

Two holes later, Burnham had earned her first trip to the national finals.

“I’d been in a couple playoffs, actually. I think just being in those playoffs was more helpful than anything to get me through the NCAAs,” Burnham said this week. “I know you just have to hit it down the middle or hit it close to the pin and almost intimidate your opponent a little bit so they feel they’re working harder than I am.”

Burnham is in Eugene Country Club in Oregon as one of the 132 golfers competing in the NCAA Championships, which run Friday through Monday for individuals. She is the Spartans’ lone qualifier after the team finished 11th at the regional.

“What makes her special as a player, and the biggest thing that I’m always impressed about, is that she knows she came here for a reason and that she has a job to do that,” MSU coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll said. “And she’s very committed to that job, which is to be the best player and student she can be.”

Burnham tied for ninth at Stanford with a 214, carding the lowest three-round score ever by a Spartan in NCAA Regional play. When Virginia qualified as a team, that put the native of Maple Grove, Minnesota, in a playoff against UNLV's Kaui.

It was a position Burnham had thrived in before in amateur competition, including her victory at the 2012 Minnesota Women's Amateur while still in high school.

“I just had the mindset that, ‘I’m playing in the playoffs, and this is what’s gonna happen,’" she said of the NCAA Regional experience. "We went into town and got lunch, so I got relaxed a little. Virginia wasn’t even done yet at the time, but I was just in the mindset that I was gonna be in the playoffs, and I had to get my mind ready for that.”

On the first playoff hole, Burnham outdrove Kaui by about 50 yards, then put her approach shot within 6 feet before missing the putt. Both golfers took par.

Burnham ended it on the second hole. She hit another drive down middle, her next shot to within 4 feet of the pin, then dropped a downhill left-to-right putt for birdie and the berth in the NCAAs.

“There’s something inside a player like her that – not to say that it’s unexplainable, but it’s just special. She has that mentality inside of her,” Slobodnik-Stoll said. “She just has that chemistry inside her body, that mixture that allows someone to be successful.”

Burnham will play 54 holes to see if she can make it to the final day of individual competition in Eugene. The top nine individuals who are there without a team will play Sunday alongside the top 15 teams to determine the individual champion.

“I am expecting pretty good competition and a very nice golf course,” she said. “I’m just going to go out there and see what I can do.”