Conference champion Auburn heads strong SEC contingent to NCAA regionals

   It’s been a week since Auburn’s Wills Padgett, a freshman from Wichita, Kan., dropped a 20-foot birdie putt to give the Tigers a dramatic 3-2 victory over in-state rival Alabama in the Southeast Conference championship match.

   As much as I tried to keep up with all the conference championships these last couple of weeks, there were loops to catch at Stonewall and I couldn’t quite get to yet another epic SEC Championship. But in a very real way, I saved the best for last.

   When the NCAA announced the fields its regional golf championships, all 14 SEC teams made the cut. That’s right, every team in the SEC will still be in the hunt for an NCAA Championship when the six regionals tee off May 14.

   Eight of those 14 teams are seeded among the top five in their respective regionals meaning there is at least an expectation that they will advance to the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek Golf Club.

   SEC champion Auburn, No. 10 in the latest Golfstat rankings, is seeded second behind host and reigning national champion Oklahoma in the Norman Regional. No. 15 Arkansas is seeded third at Norman.

   The SEC has the top two seeds in two different regionals as No. 6 LSU and No. 7 Alabama are 1-2, respectively, in the Stockton Regional and No. 5 Vanderbilt and No. 8 Florida are 1-2, respectively, in the Kissimmee Regional.

   No. 2 Texas A&M is a third SEC top seed as the Aggies will host a field that includes five of their SEC brethren in the Bryan Regional.

   All of which added up to all kinds of tremendous golf last weekend at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga. The SEC went to a format that mimics the NCAA Championship with three days of stroke-play qualifying and three rounds of match play in order to better prepare any of its teams that might make the final eight teams in match play at the NCAA Championship.

   The jury is still out on how effective that strategy is. But there is no question as to whether the format  lends itself to the kind of drama that has made the NCAA Championship such a hit for The Golf Channel.

   And no matter how this postseason goes for Auburn, the Tigers will forever go in the books as the champion of the deepest, most talented conference in the country. As I mentioned when the SEC women played their championship, the rivalries in this conference are very real and very intense, no matter what the sport.

   It came down to Padgett, a freshman, against the Crimson Tide’s Jonathan Hardee, a senior from Greer, S.C. And Padgett got the job done, his clutch birdie at the last giving him a 1-up win over Hardee and the Tigers the title with a 3-2 win over their bitter in-state rival.

   Auburn got another clutch point from another freshman, Brandon Mancheno of Jacksonville, Fla., who claimed a 2 and 1 win over Wilson Furr, a junior from Jackson, Miss.

   Mancheno was rock solid in match play. He earned a point in the Tigers’ hard-fought 3-2 win over Arkansas in the quarterfinals last Saturday, April 28, and pulled out a dramatic win over LSU’s Jacob Bergeron, a freshman from Slidell, La., on the 19^th hole for the decisive point in a 4-1 win over the Bayou Tigers in the semifinals later that same day.

   Auburn’s other point came from Trace Crowe, a junior from Bluffton, S.C. who defeated Davis Riley, a junior from Hattiesburg, Miss., 2 and 1. It capped an outstanding weekend for Crowe, who finished among a group of four players that tied for third in the battle for the individual championship and had key match wins in Auburn’s quarterfinal victory over Arkansas and the victory over LSU in the semifinals.

   In the title match, Alabama got a 2 and 1 win from Lee Hodges, its stalwart senior from Ardmore, Tenn., over Jovan Rebula, a sophomore from South Africa, and a 6 and 5 victory from Davis Shore, a freshman from Knoxville, Tenn., over Ryan Knop a sophomore from Pleasanton, Calif.

   In addition to Mancheno’s 19^th-hole clincher in the semifinals for Auburn, Rebula and Crowe pulled out hard-fought 1-up victories against LSU. Rebula edged Philip Barbaree, a sophomore from Shreveport, La., while Crowe topped Luis Gagne, a junior from Orlando, Fla.

   Alabama reached the final with a 3-1-1 victory over Florida as Riley dusted off the Gators’ Andy  Zhang, a sophomore from Reunion, Fla. who had captured the SEC individual title in a playoff a day earlier, 4 and 3.

   Hardee knocked off last year’s SEC individual champion, Alejandro Tosti, a senior from Argentina who is No. 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), 3 and 2, and the Crimson Tide got their third full point from Shore, who claimed a 1-up win over Gordon Neale, a junior from Dove Canyon, Calif.

   Padgett, the eventual hero for Auburn, joined Crowe and Mancheno in claiming victories in the Tigers’ quarterfinal win over Arkansas.

   Only in the SEC could you catch a quarterfinal match on a sleepy Saturday morning between Alabama and defending champion Vanderbilt. The Crimson Tide pulled out a 3-2 win in a battle that you wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see reprised in the NCAA Championship.

   Alabama’s Hardee claimed a 1-up win over Theo Humphrey, a senior from Greenwich, Conn. who is No. 8 in the WAGR. Hodges also pulled out a hard-fought 1-up win over the Commodores’ Will Gordon, a junior from Davidson, N.C. And the Tide’s third point came from Riley, who edged Mason Greenberg, a redshirt freshman from Southlake, Texas, 2 and 1.

   You could also have checked out the No. 2 player in the WAGR, Mississippi’s Braden Thornberry, a junior from Olive Branch, Miss., in a quarterfinal match at the SEC Championship. Ole Miss fell, 3-2, to Florida, but Thornberry, the reigning NCAA individual champion and a member of the U.S. team that claimed a 19-7 victory over Great Britain & Ireland in the Walker Cup Match last summer, won his match, 2 and 1, over the Gators’ Neale.

   The winners for Florida were Zhang and a couple of freshmen, John Axelson of Denmark and Chris Nido of Miami.

   The fourth quarterfinal saw LSU pull out a 3-2 win over Texas A&M, at No. 2 the highest-rated SEC team by Golfstat, despite having lost Cameron Champ, a teammate of Thornberry’s on the winning U.S. Walker Cup side, to the professional ranks after the fall portion of the season.

   Barbaree, Bergeron and Nathan Jeansonne, a junior from Keithville, La., picked up full points for the Bayou Tigers with match-play wins. Again, it was the kind of match you could easily envision being repeated at Karsten Creek.

   Gagne opened the festivities by blistering the 6,898-yard, par-70 Seaside Course at Sea Island with a brilliant 4-under 66 Wednesday, April 25. He would eventually finish in that group tied for third at 3-under 207 that included Auburn’s Crowe, Tennessee’s Lorenzo Scalise, a senior from Italy, and Arkansas’ William Buhl, a sophomore from Fairhope, Ala.

   It also set the stage for the Bayou Tigers to claim team medalist honors in qualifying. They opened with a 1-over 281, added a 4-under 276 and finished up with a 3-under 277 for a 6-under 834 total. LSU was the only team to finish under par for three rounds.

   Florida, which closed with the best team round of stroke play with an 8-under 272, and defending champion Vanderbilt finished tied for second at 3-over 843.

   The eventual finalists, Auburn and Alabama, and Arkansas, which also closed strong with a 6-under 274 in the final round, shared fourth place at 8-over 848.

   Texas A&M and Ole Miss, No. 34 in the latest Golfstat rankings, nailed down the final two berths in match play as they shared seventh place at 11-over 851. Again, the Aggies are the No. 2 team in the country, but after opening with a 16-over 296, they had to scramble with outstanding rounds of 3-under 277 and 2-under 278 just to make match play.

   Zhang, meanwhile, fired a brilliant 4-under 66 in the final round to reach 5-under 205 in the battle for the individual title. Ole Miss’ Cecil Wegener, a freshman from Ridgeland, Miss. who took the lead into the final round after a sizzling 5-under 65 in the second round, joined Zhang at 205 by matching par in the final round with a 70.

   Zhang captured the title on the third hole of a playoff with a par as Wegener’s six-footer for par lipped out. It was the 24^th time a Gator golfer has won the SEC individual title.

   After the foursome that finished tied for third at 3-under 207 came a couple of seniors who finished tied for seventh at 2-under 208 in their final appearance at an SEC Championship. Vanderbilt’s Humphrey finished up with a 2-over 72 after recording a pair of 2-under 68s and Alabama’s Hodges sandwiched a 2-over 72 in the middle round with a pair of 68s.

   They will move on to represent their schools and their conference, the best in men’s college golf, in the NCAA regionals and they will do so as they always have, with class.