The Georgia Tech golf team’s season ended two matches short of its goal with a quarterfinal loss to Oklahoma State at the NCAA championships at Prairie Dunes Country Club.
The fourth-seeded Yellow Jackets lost four of the five match-play matches to the second-seeded Cowboys Tuesday morning, with two of Oklahoma State’s wins decided on the final hole. The Cowboys won the first three pairings to clinch the match when Tech’s Anders Albertson was unable to chip in on the final hole to birdie and even his match with Wyndham Clark and force extra holes.
“It’s just a putt here or there (that) maybe changes some things, but hat’s off (to the Cowboys),” Tech coach Bruce Heppler said. “They made more than we did.”
Tech fell behind in three of the five matches on the opening hole (the round began on the 10th hole) and never seemed to recover. Before the first pairing – Tech’s Richy Werenski and Oklahoma State’s Talor Gooch – had reached the seventh hole, all five matches were in Oklahoma State’s favor.
“They hit some nice shots on 10 and I just felt like we were chasing ’em all day,” Heppler said.
Despite the close scores of each match, in the 88 holes played among the five pairings, Tech led for just two of them, in Ollie Schniederjans’ match, which ended on the fairway of the ninth hole all square after Albertson’s loss decided the match.
Werenski lost to Gooch 2 and 1, Bo Andrews lost to Zachary Olsen 1 up, Albertson lost to Clark 1 up, Schniederjans’ match with Ian Davis ended all square and Seth Reeves lost to Jordan Niebrugge 2 and 1.
Heppler called it probably one of the three best teams in his 19-year tenure at Tech, a span that has included four runner-up finishes at the NCAA championships. The Jackets won six tournaments, including the ACC title and their NCAA regional, and came to Prairie Dunes ranked in the top five. Tech’s hunt for its first national championship in golf will continue.
“We’ve made match play four of the last five years,” Heppler said. “It just hasn’t quite worked out. These guys have won a lot of tournaments, four or five of them are going to be academic All-Americans and stuff. You just control what you can control, and that’s not the other team unfortunately.”
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