Chervony's win sends Texas to NCAA Championship's Final Match against Stanford

   Zach Bauchou’s putt with darkness descending on The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. shoehorned around the hole and lipped out and, just like that, one of the great seasons in Oklahoma State’s distinguished history was over, one step short of a second straight trip to the NCAA Championship’s Final Match

   Bauchou, a senior from Forest, Va. and the No. 19 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), has been right in the middle of a two-year stretch of dominance by the Cowboys, No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings.

   He had trailed Texas’ Steven Chervony, a senior from Boca Raton, Fla., 1-down, after 15 holes, but turned the tables on Chervony to take a 1-up advantage into the final hole. Chervony, however, answered by burying a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole to send the final match of a long day of quarterfinal and semifinal drama to the first tee for the 19^th hole.

   Both reached the green in regulation, but Bauchou left his first putt a little more than three feet short. When Chervony lagged his birdie putt to gimmie range, Bauchou had no margin for error. And he couldn’t get his par putt to fall. Lipouts are, by nature, cruel, but this one seemed particularly egregious.

   It gave No. 5 Texas a stunning 3-2 victory over its Big 12 rival and into the Final Match against Pac-12 champion Stanford, which pulled out a 3-2 victory over No. 4 Vanderbilt, out of the Southeastern Conference, in the other semifinal match. Weather concerns have prompted NCAA officials to move up the start of the Final Match to 8:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

   You don’t get much say in how the seedings play out for match play and Oklahoma State wasn’t about to give back its dominating 31-shot victory through 72 holes of stroke play that gave the Cowboys the top seed.

   But it was quickly apparent that if Oklahoma State was able to get by No. 53 SMU in the quarterfinals Tuesday morning – which it did with a solid 4-1 victory -- it was going to get either Texas or No. 6 Oklahoma in the semifinals. The Longhorns had lost to Oregon in the Final Match three years ago. The Sooners had beaten Oregon for the national title two years ago. The Cowboys had dominated Alabama in last year’s Final Match.

   There is a healthy respect among the three programs. But nobody’s backing down from anybody when the three, or any two of the three, get together.

   Texas had its hands full with the Sooners in Tuesday morning’s quarterfinals with Parker Coody, one of the Longhorns’ twin grandsons of 1971 Masters champion Charles Coody, closing out the Sooners’ Garett Reband, a junior from Fort Worth, Texas, 1-up, to send the Longhorns into the meeting with Oklahoma State.

   The Golf Channel had to be drooling when the matchups came out and Texas sent Cole Hammer, a freshman from Houston and No. 5 in the WAGR, out in the second match to face Matthew Wolff, a sophomore from Agoura Hills, Calif. and No. 4 in the WAGR who, a day earlier, had finished off a dominating five-shot victory to claim the NCAA individual championship.

   Wolff was brilliant. Hammer was more brilliant. Trust me, Cole Hammer isn’t sneaking up on anybody in college golf. He birdied six of his first nine holes on his way to a 4 and 3 victory over Wolff. It is a rivalry certain to be renewed many times again, likely on the PGA Tour some day.

   On this day, it gave the young Longhorns belief that maybe big, bad Oklahoma State could be had. 

   The Cowboys’ Viktor Hovland, a junior from Norway and No. 1 in the WAGR, earned a 2 and 1 victory over Spencer Soosman, a junior from Westlake Village, Calif. Austin Eckroat, a sophomore from Edmond, Okla. and No. 45 in the WAGR, got another point for Oklahoma State with a 3 and 2 victory over Parker Coody.

   Pierceson Coody, the other half of the Coody tandem from Plano, Texas, came up big with a 5 and 4 win over Hayden Wood, a senior from Edmond, Okla., that evened the score at 2-2. Texas had earned points from two of the three freshmen in its starting lineup and put it in the hands of Longhorns’ senior.

   And Chervony got the job done.

   There was plenty of drama in the other semifinal. The last match on the course pitted Stanford freshman Daulet Tuleudayev of Khazakhstan against Vanderbilt’s Harrison Ott, a sophomore from Brookfield, Wis.

   Each team had two points on the board and Tuleudayev had built a 4-up lead. Things were looking good for the No. 10 Cardinal.

   But Ott worked his way back into the match and cut his deficit to 1-down when he won the 17^th hole. The sequence at the 17^th included Tuleudayev striking the ball with one of his practice strokes as he prepared to hit his first putt. Yes, that’s a one-stroke penalty.

   But the Khazakhstan Kid calmly hit the 18^th green in regulation and drove a stake through Vanderbilt’s heart by dropping a 20-foot birdie putt. As I’ve mentioned before, match play might not be the most fair way to crown a champion, but if you like drama, and who doesn’t, match play delivers that like nothing else.

   Stanford got its other two points from its veteran seniors, Isaiah Salinda of South San Francisco, Calif. and No. 14 in the WAGR, and Brandon Wu of Scarsdale, N.Y. and No. 12 in the WAGR. Salinda claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Patrick Martin, a senior from Birmingham, Ala., while Wu earned a 4 and 3 decision over Reid Davenport, a freshman from Austin, Texas.

   John Augenstein, a junior from Owensboro, Ky. and No. 29 in the WAGR, defeated Henry Shimp, a junior from Charlotte, N.C., 2-up, and Will Gordon, a senior from Davidson, N.C. and No. 10 in the WAGR, capped his brilliant career with the Commodores with a 1-up decision over David Snyder, a junior from McAllen, Texas, to deliver Stanford’s two points.

   Snyder had come up big for the Cardinal in Tuesday morning’s quarterfinals as his 1-up victory over Wake Forest’s Lee Detmer, a senior from Washington, gave Stanford a 3-2 win over the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Demon Deacons, ranked third.

   Salinda rallied from an early 4-down deficit to beat Eugenio Chacarra, a freshman from Spain, and Wu knocked off Eric Bae, a junior from Pinehurst, N.C., 4 and 3, to again deliver two big points for the Cardinal.

   Gordon had kept Vanderbilt’s hopes alive in the quarterfinals when he edged Texas A&M’s Dan Erickson, a junior from Whittier, Calif., on the 19^th hole to clinch the Commodores’ 3-2 victory over the 17^th-ranked Aggies in the SEC matchup.

   Martin cruised to a 5 and 4 victory over Walker Lee, a sophomore from Houston, and Augenstein earned a 2 and 1 decision over Brandon Smith, a junior from Frisco, Texas, to pick up the other two points for Vanderbilt.

   Chandler Phillips, a senior from Huntsville, Texas and No.  11 in the WAGR, wrapped up his outstanding career at Texas A&M in style as he claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Vanderbilt’s Ott.

   One of the feature matches of the morning pitted Wolff against SMU’s Noah Goodwin, a sophomore from Corinth, Texas, in a rematch of the 2017 U.S. Junior Amateur final at Flint Hills National Golf Club in Andover, Kan. won by Goodwin.

   Goodwin battled, but Wolff pulled out a 2 and 1 victory. Hovland, Wood and Eckroat also won their matches as the Cowboys rode into the semifinals.

   It would take a heroic effort to deny Oklahoma State its 12^th national championship and back-to-back national crowns for the first time in program history. And Texas delivered that kind of performance.