Tech highest among state teams in contention at NCAA golf finals

HUTCHINSON, Kansas – As night fell on the plains Saturday, crickets chirped, thunder rumbled and four golf teams from Georgia felt anything but satisfied.

At the NCAA championships at Prairie Dunes Country Club, Georgia played two of its poorest back-to-back rounds of the season and Kennesaw State is at the back of the pack. Georgia Tech and Georgia State are in the picture, but both are on the outside looking in as 30 teams pursue a top-eight finish after 54 holes to advance to match play.

Adding to the unease is that, due to the rains that washed out the first day of play Friday and has wrought havoc with the scheduling, the team stroke play portion of the event may be reduced from 54 to 36 holes. That would be especially damaging for the fourth-seeded Yellow Jackets, who have completed 36 holes and at the end of play Saturday gave away a spot in the top eight with a bogey-filled finish. Georgia State has only completed one round and will tee off early Sunday.

“I’ve tried to learn in my life, you can’t worry about stuff you can’t control,” said Tech coach Bruce Heppler, “but it’s just unfortunate, because we were right there, and we would have been inside the top eight and sat around and watched to see what happened, and now we’re outside of it and can’t control it anymore.”

The Jackets are tied for 10th at 1-under par, 11 strokes behind leader Stanford and three shots behind three teams tied at sixth, LSU, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. No. 29 seed Georgia State is tied for 16th at five-over par. Sixth-seeded Georgia is in 25th place at 13-over after two rounds. Kennesaw State, the No. 26 seed, is in 26th place with one round complete at 14-over.

Play resumed Saturday after rain delays totaling eight hours washed out most of the first round Friday. The teams that were scheduled to play in the morning wave Friday and the afternoon wave Saturday, including Georgia State and Kennesaw State, finished their first round Saturday and then were excused until Sunday. Teams slotted in the Friday afternoon wave and the Saturday morning wave played two rounds Saturday, although some did not complete all 36 holes.

In fact, Tech's Ollie Schniederjans and Georgia's Joey Garber, playing in a threesome with Cal's Brandon Hagy, had to hurry to finish their final holes before play was called around 8:40 p.m. Central time due to darkness, lest they have to return to finish the round at 7 a.m. Sunday. Garber even ran up the eighth fairway, the clubs in his bag jangling, to speed up play, and both he and Schniederjans teed off on the ninth hole (they began the round on the 10th hole) before Hagy had even holed out on No. 8.

The extended day may have played a factor in Tech’s finish at dusk. Through 34 holes, the Jackets were at 5-under, safely in the top eight. However, Seth Reeves double-bogeyed the par-4 eighth after losing his ball in deep rough and Anders Albertson bogeyed the eighth and ninth holes. A 5-under score would have placed Tech in a tie for fifth. Instead, the Jackets will begin Sunday with ground to make up.

“You’re just tired,” Schniederjans said. “I mean, literally, your body is tired. Your swing, it doesn’t feel as fresh.”

Heppler was perturbed at the missed opportunity to score on a day when the course, with light winds, was vulnerable to low rounds.

“We fought all the way through there and hit three bad tee shots and make a mess at the end,” Heppler said. “Other than that, I thought we played really, really well.”

Schniederjans, who on Friday was named a finalist for the Jack Nicklaus Award for national player of the year, rallied from a first-round 71 with a 65 in the second, with six birdies against one bogey.

Georgia opened with a seven-over 287, with none of the Bulldogs finishing below par. Joey Garber, ranked fifth in the country by Golfstat, shot a 4-over 70, tied for his second-worst round of the year relative to par in 30 rounds of play. The Bulldogs followed by giving away seven more strokes to par in the second round to finish at 13 over.

“We just never got any momentum going in the round, just kind of a shaky start and just never going any birdies, never really got anything going,” Georgia coach Chris Haack said.

Seventeen strokes and 16 teams separate the Bulldogs from the top eight, which may be a gap too wide for the two-time national champions to make up in 18 holes.

“It’s tough to see that on a scoreboard, but, honestly, tomorrow, if we get a chance to play, we all have the ability to shoot 3-under or better and maybe sneak into this thing,” Garber said.

Georgia State received 1-under rounds from Tyler Gruca and Davin White and a 1-over from Nathan Mallonee, but the Panthers’ two other players were a combined 15-over. Counting J.J. Grey’s 6-over in the team score, the Panthers finished the first round Saturday at 5-over and will begin their second round early Sunday.