Tag: Grayhawk Golf Club

Vanderbilt freshman Gordon Sargent wins individual title at 2022 NCAA Championship

Sargent is the ninth freshman to win the individual title, the first to do so since 2007.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Twelve players were within four shots of the leaders as they made the turn in the final round of stroke play at the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship on Monday, setting up for a frantic finish in the desert.

Five players were tied for the lead at even par, with two players in the clubhouse – Parker Coody (Texas) and Ryan Burnett (North Carolina) – and the final group of Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra (Oklahoma State), Chris Gotterup (Oklahoma) and Gordon Sargent (Vanderbilt) on the 18th tee. Chacarra and Sargent each made par to advance to a playoff with Coody and Burnett, with Gotterup making bogey to fall back into a tie for fifth at 1 over with Arizona State’s Cameron Sisk, Pepperdine’s William Mouw and North Carolina’s David Ford.

Sargent, a freshman from Birmingham, Alabama, made birdie on the first playoff hole to claim medalist honors and become the ninth freshman to win the individual national title since USC’s Jamie Lovemark in 2007. Sargent is the second freshman in the span of a week to claim medalist honors at the NCAAs, following Rose Zhang of Stanford.

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Meet the 15 teams to make the first cut at the 2022 NCAA Championship

Oklahoma leads the way as the only team under par.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — After 54 holes of stroke play the field of 30 teams at the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship is now down to 15 following the first cut on Sunday evening.

Oklahoma leads the way as the lone team under par at 1 under, four shots clear of in-state rivals Oklahoma State and six clear of third-place Vanderbilt. Seven of the teams to play in the morning wave on Sunday took advantage of the early conditions to solidify their spot inside the cut, leaving the rest of the field to duke it out for the final eight spots.

After Monday’s final round of stroke play an individual national champion will be crowned and the field will be cut to the top eight teams to set the bracket for match play. Meet the 15 teams competing for one of those coveted match play positions.

Scores: Team | Individual

Ringler: Despite the lofty scores, Grayhawk Golf Club is doing its job as the 2022 NCAA Championship host

Despite what anyone says, good, bad or neutral, the course and setup are providing a proper championship test.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — No, it’s not Rivera. It’s not the Honors Course and it’s not Inverness.

It is a golf course that is playing difficult, where par is a great score. A golf course where it is a must to play from the fairway. Sounds a lot like major championship golf, right?

And over the last two week’s Grayhawk Golf Club has been the host of college golf’s major championship. It’s firm and fast and some had even started to use the word “baked” by Friday.

There was skepticism when it was announced that college golf’s finale would be played here in the Arizona desert, and rightfully so. The NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship has only been played in the state Arizona once when Tucson National hosted in 1971. No professional major has been played here, either.

We often equate desert golf with red numbers and low scores. The lingering question leading up to last year’s championship was could this desert layout provide a proper championship test?

Scores: Team | Individual

We quickly found out that Grayhawk could provide the test and defense needed for us to call it championship-like. Only one team was under par last year and that was the local host Arizona State. Only eleven players broke par this time last year.

This year, scoring seems to be more difficult.

However, there are some unusual things we are seeing. Driver is not the popular club for most tee shots. And that’s ok some of the time, right? Or do we need more length to make it more like a championship?

At 7,289 yards and reduced from a par 72 to a par 70 the course could use more length. Maybe that length would put a driver in the players’ hands more often. But would that make it better?

One of the issues this week is that the course may have been too contrast from morning to afternoon, prompting one coach to call it “unreasonable.”

The morning wave average for the week? That’d be 288.27, well below the afternoon wave average of 296.73.

But did the course actually play different? Should the course play as different as we are seeing from morning to afternoon? Can anything even be done to prevent that?

The format is such that it rewards the teams for playing well in the first two rounds. Because it is a qualifier, the best scores play in the better morning wave for round three.

Two teams from third round afternoon wave – Georgia Tech and Florida – played its way into the top 15 and made the 54-hole cut. Overall three teams – Ole Miss, Auburn and Oregon – played their way into the top 15 from the worst-seeded wave, knocking out Wake Forest, Stanford and Texas A&M.

The oddest thing we are witnessing to this point is the fact that this year the ordering of teams is freakishly spot on.

Never have we even been close to seeing the top-ranked teams line up in the order they are. Nos. 1-7 in the Golfweek/Sagarin and Golfstat rankings are also the inside the top seven and nearly in order after 54 holes.

Championship golf can have different formulas. Here at Grayhawk it appears to be find the fairway and control your distance with your second shot. Sounds like that sort of equation can work at many championship venues.

Despite what anyone says, good, bad or neutral, the course and setup are doing its jobs.

“You can’t ask for anything more than that from a championship golf course,” said Oklahoma State coach Alan Bratton.

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Oklahoma senior Patrick Welch catches fire in the desert at NCAA Championship

“I hit pretty much every green. I think I missed one by like two feet.”

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Wake Forest’s Alex Fitzpatrick set a tough bar to limbo under with his bogey-free 65 on Saturday.

Patrick Welch said hold my birdie and danced his way around Grayhawk Golf Club during Sunday’s third round to the tune of a bogey-free, 7-under 63, tying the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship record at the tricky track in the desert set at last year’s championship by Arizona State’s Ryggs Johnston.

“I hit pretty much every green. I think I missed one by like two feet,” said Welch of round. “I was giving myself so many chances all day, 20 feet, 10 feet, five feet, they were all realistic looks. I was putting it well today and I was fortunate enough for most of them to go in.”

The senior from Aliso Viejo, California, took advantage of calm conditions and birdied two of his first four holes, then added three in a row from Nos. 8-10 to sit 5 under through just 10 holes. He added two more on Nos. 14 and 15 to climb the leaderboard all the way to fourth at 1 under. Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent sits first at 4 under, with Oklahoma’s Chris Gotterup in second at 3 under and Oklahoma State’s Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra in third at 2 under.

The round was two shots off the course record of 61 at Grayhawk’s Raptor course, first set by Mark Hensby in 2007 and matched two years later by Troy Matteson.

“It was incredible to watch him. When Patrick really hits the ball well, he’s so in control of his game. All areas. Tee ball, iron play, and that’s what we saw today,” said head coach Ryan Hybl. “I didn’t know we’d get a 63 out of him, but I felt like there was going to be a good one. Hopefully he can go get another one tomorrow because he is hitting it that good.”

Oklahoma is the lone team under par on the team leaderboard at 1 under and hold a four-shot lead over in-state rivals Oklahoma State heading into Monday’s final round of stroke play. In addition to two of the top four, the Sooners have both Logan McAllister and Drew Goodman T-20 at 4 over.

“We all know each one of us can go low and play really well,” said Welch of his team. “Yesterday, Chris and Logan led the way. The first day they all led the way, I didn’t play great the first round, and today I just had it going. But tomorrow someone else or all of us could get it going. We just try and play team golf. We don’t think about ourselves, we think about the team first and I think that really helps, especially this week.”

With high winds and higher temperatures as the day drags on, playing in the morning wave helps, too. The tournament format sees the top-15 teams after the first 36 holes play in the morning for the third round, while teams 16-30 play in the afternoon. Unlike the previous two days, morning scores were low on Sunday, with a stroke average of 72.31 from the early tee times, a good two shots better than the two previous days (74.43 on Friday and 74.60 on Saturday). Last year’s averages for the first three rounds, you ask?

“The only true advantage you have in this event is earning your right to play this morning, which we did. You saw the golf course not play super hard, I think a lot of that was because the greens just weren’t that firm,” said Hybl, who believes last years greens were more firm and challenging than this year’s. “I just feel like everybody was talking about the first day because they used about six of the harder flags they can use out here all on the very first day. I just found the golf course playing kind of perfect for a championship. You hit good shots, you’re gonna get rewarded. You hit poor shots, you’re gonna be struggling around.”

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Kansas proving they have what it takes to make deep run at men’s 2022 NCAA Championship

“We have some guys that are really good, but they have to play really well too,” said head coach Jamie Bermel.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Some might say it’s a nice story and run for Kansas to have simply navigated its way to Grayhawk Golf Club for the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship. Others might notice that this team could also navigate its way through a few of the necessary checkpoints to extend its season.

It’s something head coach Jamie Bermel, who brings the Jayhawks to the finals for the second time in four years, talked about with his team.

“We said look, we have to get into the morning wave for the third round, make the cut and then get into match play. When you get into match play anything can happen,” said Bermel. “To get into the top eight you need four good scores. To win a match you only need three wins.”

That’s the beauty of this championship for a team like Kansas, whose best NCAA finish is T-11 in 1950.

It’s a fact that teams ranked at the very top almost always win stroke play. Just once in 12 years has a team not ranked in the top three been the best after 72 holes, and that was Arizona State last year when the Sun Devils were ranked 10th.

However, the eventual NCAA match play champion has been ranked outside the top 10 five times in 12 years of head-to-head play. There’s hope for all who get to Grayhawk and can find a top-eight spot after 72 holes.

Opening rounds of 286 and 297 have given the Jayhawks that third round morning tee time. One checkpoint cleared. Next up? Make the 54-hole cut which comes after round three on Sunday.

There is no reason to believe this Jayhawks team can’t be one of those teams that can continue to stay in the mix. Their season to this point has prepared them for this run.

A four-win fall put the Jayhawks in the top 10 at one point. After a season-opening fifth-place finish at the Marquette Intercollegiate, Bermel’s squad went on to win four consecutive events: Gopher Invitational, Windon Memorial, Quail Valley Collegiate and the Ka’anapali Classic Collegiate.

Two Jayhawks would win individually, with Luke Kluver claiming the Gopher and Davis Cooper winning the Windon.

“It was one of those deals where you hate for the fall season to end,” said Bermel. “We were really confident and feeding off of each other.”

The spring season did not produce the same sort of results. The Jaywaks would slowly drop in the national rankings, but still remained a top-30 team.

The college golf season stretches out more than nine months and it’s hard to stay sharp that long, which may have been a problem.

“I felt we kind of lost our focus and you hate to make excuses,” said Bermel. “When (Kansas) was playing in the sweet 16 (in college basketball) we didn’t play very well, when KU was in the Final Four, we didn’t play very well.”

Thankfully for the golf, the college golf season extends past the college basketball season, which came to an end and saw the Jayhawks win the NCAA basketball title.

“Our kids were so into basketball and not to make excuses, but I felt we lost some of our focus.”

A sixth-place finish at the Big 12 Championship was followed by being named the No. 5 seed at the NCAA Bryan Regional. Kansas would find itself on the outside looking in heading into the final round of regional play. A gut-check performance with Callum Bruce ill and not able to play the final two rounds, the Jayhawks would be just good enough to advance, with Cooper coming up big as a substitute.

If we condense the Jayhawks season into this championship week for golf, comparisons can be made. We saw a good start, now will Kansas be able to stay focused and continue to check the boxes needed to keep playing golf?

Bermel thinks so.

“We have three fifth year guys in Luke Kluver, William Duquette and Davis Cooper. We have experience and I think that helps.”

It’s been a very good year for Jayhawks golf, which may be the best in program history. Can they continue to clear the hurdles and get a crack at what most teams dream about when they make it this far?

“We have some guys that are really good, but they have to play really well too,” said Bermel.

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Georgia senior Trent Phillips finally sees a hole-in-one go in, this time at the 2022 NCAA Championship

The ace is the second of Phillips’ career, but he never saw the first one go in.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Trent Phillips wrote a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on his scorecard Saturday in the second round of the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club.

We’ll call that a desert golf six-pack.

The senior from Inman, South Carolina, sits T-18 at 3 over after rounds of 71-72 to start his final quest for a national championship. Phillips made the first hole-in-one of the tournament on Saturday with his ace on the 230-yard par-3 13th.

”It was pretty electric,” said Phillips of his second career hole-in-one. “It was a full 6-iron, I hit hard, it looked good all the way, and it went in. I could see it go in and then I saw all the people going crazy. It was a great feeling.”

Scores: Team | Individual

Seeing the ball go in was important for Phillips, since he never saw his first ace drop. In a Q&A on the Georgia website, Phillips told the unique story of his first hole-in-one:

Q: Have you ever had a hole-in-one? If so, can you tell me about your first one?

Phillips: I know it’s going to sound weird but I think I’ve had one. That sounds really weird.

It was in high school and we were playing a practice round for our state championship at Furman. I hit this 7-iron and it never left the (flagstick), and I just never saw it. It literally went right over the top of the flag and I’m thinking, ‘There’s a hazard back there.’ I’m thinking, ‘Did I fly the green?’ I go over the green and look in the hazard, and then I go look in the hole. And there’s a ball in the hole.

I think I flew it in and didn’t see it.

If a ball goes in the hole and nobody sees it, did it really happen?

Phillips is a finalist for the Haskins Award – given annually to the men’s college golfer of the year – after his win at the Williams Cup, a pair of runner-up finishes at the Carmel Cup and Linger Longer Invitational and a pair of fourth-place finishes at the Puerto Rico Classic and Calusa Cup. The senior ended his spring by finishing fifth at the SEC Championship and 12th at the NCAA Bryan Regional.

His Bulldogs sit T-10 at 23 over with a cut to the top 15 teams awaiting after Sunday’s third round.

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Oklahoma, Oklahoma State take advantage of early wave to start the scoring at the NCAA Championship

Easier conditions led to lower scores on Saturday at the men’s national championship.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — After the first round of play at the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship, just seven players and zero teams were under par. Just 12 hours later the tale of the title race is vastly different.

In the second round’s morning wave alone there were nine players in the clubhouse under par on the day, as well as two teams.

Nobody was better than the top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, who shot 5 under as a squad to move into first place on the team leaderboard. The boys from Norman were led by redshirt senior Chris Gotterup, who rose to T-6 on the individual leaderboard with a 4-under 66. The transfer from Rutgers was bogey-free through his first 14 holes, with his lone blemish coming on the par-4 15th.

“You know, I got off to a really good start compared to yesterday, when I got off to a really bad start,” explained Gotterup. “So that’s kind of what I talked about with coach, about getting ready to get off to a hot start and I did that. If you can get into a good spot early on this course, it’s a little stress-free. But if you’re in a bad spot, it can really get you.”

“To be honest with you, we started out not great and really kicked into high gear whenever we made the turn. We made some big birdies over here on 9, 10 and 11,” added head coach Ryan Hybl, who noted how Saturday’s second-round pin locations were more favorable compared to the first round. “Patrick Welch and Drew Goodman out front, they got some momentum going, (Chris Gotterup) just looked like he was playing kind of solid all day long, same thing with Logan (McAllister) as well. Just played really good golf all day.”

The Sooners’ not-so-friendly neighbors to the north in Stillwater had a solid round, as well. The Oklahoma State Cowboys were the second-best team in the morning, going 3 under as a team to climb into the top five. The Cowboys were propelled by senior Aman Gupta, who shot the low round of the morning at 5-under 65 thanks to a four birdie, bogey-free back nine.

“Hit it in the junk on No. 4 and made bogey, three-putted No. 5 and I was like, ‘Wow, I’m 5 over on the leaderboard right now, I better start doing something,'” said Gupta of his 2-over through five start. He proceeded to “stuff it'” on Nos. 7-11 where he made five consecutive birdies and added a pair on Nos. 14 and 15 as well. “It was just one of those things where as long as I trusted what I was doing and didn’t try to overthink it and just didn’t get too caught up in where I stood that it was gonna be a pretty good day, and it was really good.”

The star of the day was Wake Forest’s Alex Fitzpatrick, who was a late sub from the first-round lineup due to a stomach bug. He only played a few holes during Thursday’s practice round and didn’t feel like he could play a full 18 on Friday. After a couple days of rest, the senior was back in the lineup on Saturday and immediately made his presence felt with the week’s first bogey-free round, a 5-under 65 to match Gupta.

“I can’t say I feel 100% which I know is probably silly after the round I just played but still, I had had some food on the course my stomach still wasn’t feeling great, but felt like I needed to play and glad I got it worked out,” said Fitzpatrick of his round, which will assuredly be one of few without a bogey this week at the tricky track in the desert.

“I think your I discipline has got to be pretty good around here,” said Fitzpatrick, who missed just one fairway and used mostly irons off the tee. “I think a lot of guys will try to overpower the course with 3-woods and drivers. I mean, I didn’t hit a driver until No. 11.”

With Fitzpatrick’s 5 under not counting in the race for an individual title due to his first-round WD, Vanderbilt’s Cole Sherwood sits in first place at 3 under, followed by teammate Gordon Sargent and Gupta at 2 under. Gotterup and Liberty’s Kieran Vincent are T-4 at 1 under.

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After its best NCAA Championship finish since 1993 last year, North Carolina returns to Grayhawk with one clear end goal

Last season was the team’s first top-10 finish since tying for ninth in 2003.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When North Carolina qualified for match play and earned a spot in the top eight at last year’s NCAA Championship it earned the program’s highest finish since 1993, when the Tar Heels were third.

With four of five starters returning to this year’s championship, the second consecutive year at Grayhawk Golf Club, the expectations haven’t changed for the boys in Carolina blue.

“I mean, same as last year, right? You’ve got to try to take care of business in stroke play, play the best golf you can play, get into that top eight, and then it’s like a whole new ballgame,” said head coach Andrew DiBitetto. “You take it step-by-step, but the end goal here is to go home with a national championship.

“It’s just big time trust in our guys. I think we have a really good recipe,” he continued. “Since me and (assistant coach Matt Clark) have been together, we’ve had some success in the postseason, but we haven’t come away with any championships yet. That’s the end goal. I like where our minds are at, like where our games are at, I love the talent and the depth that we have on our team this year.”

Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings: Men’s team | Men’s individual
More: What we want to see at the 2022 NCAA Championship

DiBitetto’s teams have made it to the NCAA Championship every year since 2017, finishing inside the top 20 all four years, joining Arizona State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt as the only schools to accomplish the feat. Last season was the team’s first top-10 finish since tying for ninth in 2003.

“I think it does matter. I think guys have been there, done that, not just the situation, but this golf course, you have a little bit of an understanding and expectation of how to plot your way around,” said DiBitetto of Carolina’s experience advantage. “If there are things they did well last year, continue to do that, but if there are things that you need to get better at in year two, you can kind of make some subtle adjustments for each guy if they need to.”

The Tar Heels were three-time winners this season, claiming the Rod Myers Invitational, Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational and the Williams Cup in the fall before taking a step back in the spring. Carolina then won stroke play at the ACC Championship by nine strokes before falling to Wake Forest in the semifinals in match play. Despite junior Austin Greaser earning medalist honors, the Heels fell short once again to the Demon Deacons, finishing second.

New to this year’s championship lineup is freshman David Ford, who came to Chapel Hill after a stellar junior career where he reached No. 1 in both the Rolex AJGA and Golfweek junior rankings and was first-team AJGA All-America in 2020 and honorable mention in 2019.

“I think he’s gonna be just fine. He’s so level-headed, so strong mentally,” said DiBitetto. “His game is so solid, he doesn’t really have any weaknesses. He works crazy hard and he’s trying to win every single week. I think his game is built to play really well at this golf course, just because he controls his ball really well. He’s a very smart player.”

How can Carolina continue to build towards a title? One word.

“What we like to talk about this time of year is just composure. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ACC Championship or regionals, I just feel like when post season gets here, the tendency is for the wheels to start spinning faster and faster,” explained DiBitetto. “We just talk a lot about our mindset and our body language and just making sure that we are controlling things that we can control. And a lot of that, especially this week, will just be composure and patience out here.”

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Deep, experienced Arizona State heads into men’s NCAA championship with momentum

The Sun Devils have a quasi-home event at the national championship after cruising to victory in regionals.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Arizona State men’s golf coach Matt Thurmond can only hope his team didn’t peak a little too soon.

The Sun Devils cruised to victory in the NCAA Stockton Regional last week to earn a berth in the NCAA Championship, which starts Friday at Grayhawk Golf Club.

How good were the No. 5 Sun Devils? Well, Thurmond’s squad went 38-under as a team, winning by 10 strokes. They went 17-under in the third and final round alone with four individuals placing in the top 10.

The trick will be to replicate that feat against an even tougher field this week. Among those in the 30-team field are Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma State and Pepperdine, the only teams ranked ahead of ASU in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin rankings.

“Usually you go into a tournament hoping you’re having two or three guys that can carry you,” Thurmond said. “We have had really good rounds before but for that one to come when we really needed it, third round of the regional. Everybody played very well.”

The top-five finishers in each of the six regions earned the right to play in the championship event. ASU is one of five representatives from the Pac-12, with the others being rival Arizona, Oregon, Stanford and Utah.

Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings: Men’s team | Men’s individual
More: What we want to see at the 2022 NCAA Championship

The ASU quintet will likely consist of grad student Mason Andersen, senior Cameron Sisk, junior David Puig and freshmen Preston Summerhays and Jose Luis Ballester. The team is so deep that junior Ryggs Johnston, who finished third individually at 5-under 275 in last year’s championship, won’t be in the starting lineup this time around.

Puig, Sisk and Andersen were part of last year’s ASU entry which advanced to the match play semifinal before losing to Oklahoma, which then lost the title match to Pepperdine. The Sun Devils had gone into match play as the top seed after finishing as the top team through the four rounds of stroke play.

Ballester, a native of Castellon, Spain, has been the team’s breakout star this spring. He was not in the starting lineup in the fall but Thurmond decided to give him a shot after he fared well in an individual event that was held the same time the Sun Devils team was playing in an event in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Ballester then chalked some solid showings with a fourth-place finish at in the Pac-12 tournament in Washington and a fifth-place finish at the regional event.

Andersen was the second-place individual overall at the regional with a three-day total of 10-under 206 that was just one stroke behind the medalist.

Puig made a triumphant return to the lineup in the regional after missing the previous two tournaments with a back injury. Senior James Leow played the first round but Thurmond substituted Puig for him in the second round and his No. 1 player responded with rounds of 69 and 67.

“I wanted (Puig) to be able to get a round or two in before this tournament,” Thurmond said. “I wasn’t sure how he’d do but felt like he needed to see where he was at and it was really great to see the way he performed.”

A lot is expected of ASU based on its finish at the national event a year ago, the results the Sun Devils managed this season as well as the fact they have a home course advantage, although the Raptor course at Grayhawk isn’t one they play daily.

Thurmond said his team isn’t putting too much pressure on itself to win, however.

“I don’t think you can go in thinking it’s win or bust. There are a lot of really good teams here and going in there thinking you have to win or it’s a failure is the surest way to ensure that you don’t win,” Thurmond said.

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Why BYU played its third round before the first round of the 2022 NCAA Championship

The Cougars have a unique set of circumstances this week at Grayhawk.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The shortest round in college golf was played shortly after the longest round in college golf on Thursday.

Following the practice round for the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship – that took each team six-plus hours to complete – the third round of the championship began.

And no, that’s not a typo.

On a day where the other 29 teams competing for a national title at Grayhawk Golf Club played a practice round, BYU played not its first nor its second, but its third round.

Why? Because third-round play is scheduled for Sunday, a day where the Cougars don’t compete due to religious reasons. As soon as the morning practice rounds finished, BYU hit the course to play its third round on Thursday afternoon, just as the team did in 2019 and 2018 NCAA Championships. Each player went off as a single, and the round was completed in a little more than four and a half hours.

“There’s no way of really explaining it to people because like our coach said, there’s no other tournament in the world that’s going to allow people to play on a different day because of their religious beliefs like this,” said junior Cole Ponich, the first player out today for the Cougars. “It just goes to show how good the NCAA is. They’ve all come up to us, they made us feel like we belong to be playing, you know what I mean? It’s not like it’s felt all weird and you’ve got people giving us dirty looks, everyone from the NCAA has come up to all of us and told us good luck. It’s awesome.”

Their play shows they belong, too. Ponich started off 2 over through three holes but didn’t make another bogey over the final 15 holes. He got a shot back quickly on the par-5 4th hole and played the back 2 under to sign for a 1-under 69 to lead the way. As a team, the Cougars were 10 over after their first trip around the tricky desert track.

“We had a lot of practice rounds at Riverside about two weeks leading up to this just playing in singles getting ready for it,” explained Ponich of how the team has prepared to produce a normal rhythm in the unique round. “But still, it’s a little different when you start on the first tee, nobody else there to shake hands with or introduce yourself to.”

A two-time winner this year, first to start the year at the William H. Tucker Invitational and again to end the regular season at the PING Cougar Classic, the Cougars finished runner-up at the WCC Championship and added another four top-five finishes on their road to Grayhawk.

BYU now faces a quick turn around, with a first round tee time at 7:27 a.m. local time.

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