Courtesy of Golf World Magazine

The first half of the 2008-09 campaign has come and gone. With roughly eight weeks to catch their breathe before beginning the spring march to the NCAA Championship, players and programs must assess where they stand overall and consider how to repeat any success from the fall--or recover from a disappointing start to the season.

Biggest Surprise Player - Jane Chin
Having redshirted the previous season to improve on her game, the fifth-year senior from Huntington Beach, Calif., was pleased with a second-place finish at the Ron Moore Intercollegiate in her September return. Little did she know that would be her worst performance of the fall, as Chin proceeded to rip off three straight victories in her next three starts with an average margin of victory of more than eight strokes.

Previously an all-Big West performer with a 76.5 average as a junior, she has posted a 69.92 average this fall, lowest in all of Division I women's golf. In winning the Kent Youel Invitational in Hawaii with a 13-under 203 to close out the fall, she broke the school's 54-hole scoring mark.

Chin said that during the redshirt season she focused on trying to get her swing more on plane to help with her consistency. The first glimpse that the work was paying off came in August when she defeated UCLA All-American Tiffany Joh in the first round of the U.S. Women's Amateur. "I want to try to win every tournament that we play in," Chin told the Newport Beach (Calif.) Daily Pilot earlier this fall. "I think I'm capable of that now. And I want our team to win the Big West [for a third straight season] and go to nationals.

"Two years ago I wanted to win, but, deep down, I was probably thinking more about just doing as well as I could. But, now, I think I could really win most of the tournaments we play in."