The Cardinal was just one of two teams along with Oregon to come in under par on Tuesday, as both squads shot 1-under rounds of 291 to take over the top two spots on the leaderboard. At 14-under 591, Stanford holds a comfortable nine-stroke lead over the Ducks, the team it defeated to win last year's national championship in Scottsdale.
First-round leader Arizona State, which blazed through Nanea Golf Club in record-setting fashion at 17-under on Monday, gave all of those strokes back and then some after a 19-over 311 second round.
Stanford's Rose Zhang, who is bidding for her seventh career individual title, took over the individual lead from Arizona State's Ashley Menne after the top-ranked female amateur in the world carded a 3-under 70.
At 9-under 137, she will take a two-stroke lead into Wednesday's final round over Oregon's Ashleigh Park, who turned in the lowest round of the day with a 4-under 69 to move 24 spots up the leaderboard into second at 7-under 139.
Gile Bite Starkute of Arizona and UCLA's Zoe Campos are within striking distance of the lead at 6-under 140.
Stanford freshman Megha Ganne also turned an under-par round on Tuesday with a 1-under 72 to move into a tie for sixth place with teammate Brooke Seay at 3-under.
After 20 players managed to break par on Nanea's par-73, 6449-yard layout in the first round, only 10 were able to finish in the red on Tuesday.
Wednesday's final round will be a shotgun start at 10:30 a.m. PT/7:30 a.m. HT. The Cardinal will be paired with Oregon, Arizona and Arizona State.