It appears Georgia won’t be one of the eight teams to make it the match-play portion of the NCAA men’s golf championships at the Capital City Club’s Crabapple Course.
The Bulldogs started Thursday’s third and final round of stroke play at 9 over, nine shots behind eighth place Texas A&M. Georgia was one of the first three teams out Thursday, but couldn’t take advantage of what has been better scoring conditions in the morning this week. They shot 1 over and are still 10 strokes behind the top teams, many of which have yet to tee off or have just teed off. The placement of the flags throughout the course, particularly on the closing five holes, are making low scores hard to come by.
“It’s not playing easy,” Georgia coach Chris Haack said.
Georgia Tech, which leads at 12 under, began teeing off at 1:10 p.m. The Yellow Jackets sent off Bo Andrews first. He will be followed by Shun Yat Hak, Seth Reeves, Anders Albertson and Ollie Schniederjans.
The Bulldogs won the national championship in 1999 and 2005 when the championship was a pure stroke-play format. They advanced to the semifinals in the first year of the stroke-play/match-play format in 2009, where they were beaten by Arkansas and to the championship match in 2011, where they were beaten by Augusta State.
In the stroke-play/match-play format, the top eight teams after three rounds of stroke play advance to match play, which also consists of three rounds. The championship match is scheduled to be played Sunday. It will consist of 18 holes with the top-five players from each team competing head to head.
The Bulldogs will lose just one senior off this year’s team.
Haack thought that if other teams can get their putters going they can make up ground on the leaders, but said “they’ve got these pins in some devilish little spots. You’ve got to put yourself in the right spots, for sure.”
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