Georgia Tech, Florida will play for a national championship in Final Match at Grayhawk

   Georgia Tech’s Ross Steelman could have hung his head after an individual national championship slipped away in the final round of 72 holes of stroke play Monday at Grayhawk Golf Club’s Raptor Course in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   But the main goal for Steelman, a senior from Columbia, Mo. and No. 21 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, wasn’t an individual national championship. Steelman’s main goal was a national championship for Georgia Tech and to fill in the only blank space in the glittering resume of the Yellow Jackets’ head coach, Bruce Heppler, who is in his 28^th season at the helm in Atlanta.

   So, Steelman put the disappointment of Monday behind him and went to work Tuesday. When he finished off a tense 1-up victory over North Carolina’s Peter Fountain, a junior from Raleigh, N.C., that gave Georgia Tech a 3-2 semifinal victory, Steelman had completed a 2-0 day in match play and sent the Yellow Jackets into Wednesday’s Final Match in the NCAA Championship.

   Atlantic Coast Conference champion Georgia Tech, No. 11 in the latest Golfstat rankings, will take on Southeastern Conference champion Florida, ranked ninth, for the national championship after the Gators had pulled out an equally dramatic 3-2 victory over their cross-state rival Florida State, one of three ACC teams among the four semifinalists.

   The Golf Channel couldn’t have asked for two better semifinal matchups with Georgia Tech, which won its 19^th ACC crown earlier this spring, taking on ACC rival North Carolina, the highest-ranked team left in the field at No. 2, and Florida-Florida State, the biggest in-state rivalry – no matter the sport -- this side of Auburn-Alabama.

   North Carolina had emerged from 72 holes of qualifying for match play over the 7,289-yard, par-70 Raptor Course layout with the top seed and moved into the semifinals with a 3-1 victory over No. 4 Arizona State, a Pac-12 power.

   It wasn’t the easiest of draws for the Tar Heels as Arizona State was playing just a few miles from its campus and had reached the Final Match at Grayhawk a year ago before falling to Texas.

   Steelman, meanwhile, had rolled to a 6 and 5 decision over Pepperdine’s William Mouw, a senior from Chino, Calif. and No. 20 in the WAGR, to help Georgia Tech reached the semifinals with a 3-2 victory over the Waves.

   Mouw will always be synonymous with the most successful era in the history of Pepperdine golf. He was a freshman on the 2019-2020 team that was ranked No. 1 when a novel coronavirus arrived and led to the season’s premature end. He was a member of the team that came back a year later and won a national championship.

   He was there last year when the Waves reached the semifinals at Grayhawk in defense of their national title. And he was there when Pepperdine earned a spot in the match-play bracket for the third straight spring over the Memorial Day weekend.

   Georgia Tech, though, advanced with a hard-fought victory when Hiroshi Tai, a freshman from Singapore, edged Roberto Nieves, a graduate student from Miami, Fla., on the 19^th hole.

   Nieves was a standout at Delaware before deciding to take the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA to players who lost the spring of 2020 to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic at Pepperdine.

   North Carolina’s Dylan Menante, a senior from Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 14 in the WAGR, put the first point on the board in the Tar Heels’ semifinal showdown with Georgia Tech with a 6 and 5 victory over the Yellow Jackets’ Christo Lamprecht, a junior from South Africa and No. 8 in the WAGR.

   Georgia Tech, however, got two big points from Bentley Forrester, a redshirt senior from Gainesville, Ga. and No. 53 in the WAGR, and Connor Howe, a senior from Ogden, Utah and No. 50 in the WAGR.

   Both eased to 4 and 2 victories, Bentley defeating Ryan Burnett, a fifth-year player from Lafayette, Calif. and No. 29 in the WAGR, and Howe knocking off Austin Greaser, a senior from Vandalia, Ohio who was a beaten finalist in the U.S. Amateur at Oakmont Country Club two summers ago.

   When Tai dropped a 1-up decision to Davis Ford, a sophomore from Peachtree Corners, Ga. and No. 4 in the WAGR, it was up to Steelman.

   Steelman held a 1-up lead on Fountain going to the 16^th tee at the Raptor Course. A day earlier Steelman’s bogey, bogey, bogey finish on the final three holes had cost him the NCAA’s individual crown.

   This time, though, Steelman was rock steady. He matched Fountain’s par on the par-3 16^th hole and then matched Fountain’s birdie on the short, par-4 17^th to maintain his 1-up edge going to the final hole.

   When Steelman stuck his approach at the long, par-4 18^th hole to two feet, it was over.

   Georgia Tech has been the runnerup four times in the old stroke-play format for the NCAA Championship in 1993, 2000, 2002 and 2005, the last three of those under Heppler. The deepest run in match play for the Yellow Jackets was a decade ago when they lost to Alabama in the 2013 semifinals.

   J.C. Deacon, in his ninth season as the head coach at Florida, didn’t hesitate to put Ricky Castillo in the anchor position for both of the Gators’ matches Tuesday.

   The senior from Yorba Linda, Calif. and No. 26 in the WAGR never backs down from a challenge and went 4-0 for captain Nathaniel Crosby’s United States team the pressure cooker of a Walker Cup Match at iconic Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla. two springs ago.

   And Castillo didn’t let down Deacon and the Gators.

   In the morning, Castillo stared down Virginia’s freshman phenom Ben James, No. 7 in the WAGR and coming off a sixth-place finish in the NCAA Championship’s individual chase, Castillo claiming a 4 and 2 victory in the Gators’ 3-2 victory over the 16^th-ranked Cavaliers.

   Things didn’t look good in Florida’s semifinal match with No. 7 Florida State.

   The Seminoles had put two points on the board with Jack Bigham, a freshman from England, rolling to a 6 and 5 verdict over Yuxin Lin, a senior from China and No. 30 in the WAGR, and Frederik Kjettrup, a junior from Denmark and No. 27 in the WAGR, claiming a 3 and 1 decision over Matthew Kress, a redshirt freshman from Saratoga, Calif.

   But freshly-minted NCAA individual champion Fred Biondi, a senior from Brazil and No. 16 in the WAGR, pulled out a 1-up victory over Cole Anderson, a redshirt junior from Camden, Maine, and John DuBois, a senior from Windermere, Fla., edged Luke Clanton, the Seminoles’ talented freshman from Hialeah, Fla, 1-up, to enable Florida to draw even.

   Castillo, meanwhile, had fallen 2-down with three holes to go against Florida State’s Brett Roberts, a junior from Coral Springs, Fla. and No. 74 in the WAGR. Earlier in the day, Roberts had claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Illinois’ Piercen Hunt, a junior from Hartland, Wis., to help the Seminoles reach the semifinals with a 3-2 victory over the Big Ten champion.

   Castillo cut his deficit in half with a win at the par-3 16^th hole then fearlessly lashed a 3-wood onto the green at the 330-ish-yard par-4 17^th. A two-putt birdie tied the match and that’s the way it stayed until the 21^st hole, the par-4 10^th hole at the Raptor Course.

   Castillo got his approach inside Roberts and on the same line. Roberts’ birdie bid slid just by on the left, but Castillo had seen the line and, like any really good player who is sure he’s got the line, Castillo buried his 20-footer for birdie to send the Gators to the Final Match.

   Quarterfinal/semifinal Tuesday in the NCAA Championship had delivered the drama, just as it had a week earlier in the women’s championship. Only two are left now and a national champion will be crowned in the desert Wednesday.