BRADENTON, Fla. - In a tightly-contested match, LSU ended Georgia’s season at the NCAA golf championship with a 3-1-1 decision Tuesday at the Concession Golf Club.
The Bulldogs’ pursuit of their third national men’s golf title will have to wait until 2016.
“You never want to end it on a loss, but we’ll go back, we’ll reflect on all this stuff and we’re going to realize we had a great run and a good year,” Georgia coach Chris Haack said. “We gave a lot of folks back home something to cheer about for a few days.”
In the semifinal, the No. 6 seed Bulldogs fell behind in three of their five matches against No. 7 seed LSU. Mookie DeMoss was down four holes to Zach Wright after five holes and never recovered, falling 7 and 6 in his final collegiate match. Likewise, Greyson Sigg lost the opening hole and trailed the remainder of the match, falling 4 and 3 to Eric Ricard. Lee McCoy was down one hole as late as the fifth hole, but took control of the match with a birdie and an eagle on back-to-back holes and earned a 2-and-1 win over Stewart Jolly.
That put the match’s outcome on the shoulders of junior Sepp Straka and freshman Zach Healy. Straka led by three holes with five to play and two with two to play, but lost at the 17th and 18th to go to extra holes. Healy led for seven of the first 11 holes, but fell back to all square with a bogey on a par-4 12th. He then fell behind by a hole on the par-4 15th with another bogey after his drive ended up in a pond and he played his second shot out of ankle-deep water.
With Bulldogs great Ryuji Imada supporting him in the gallery, Healy was unable to even his match in the final three holes. After an aggressive attempt to hole out a chip ran past the cup at No. 18, he conceded the hole and match to Benjamin Taylor, giving the semifinal to the Tigers.
“He’s a freshman?” LSU coach Chuck Winstead asked of Healy. “He’s got a great future ahead of him.”
The loss ended the Bulldogs’ season in the national semifinals, their best finish at the NCAA championship since their runner-up effort in 2011. LSU will play USC in Wednesday’s final. After back-to-back national titles by Alabama, the Tigers can run the SEC’s streak to three.
“Coming in, we had our sights set on, obviously, getting through stroke play, but we definitely wanted to win it all,” Healy said. “We almost got there.”
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