Butler puts the finishing touch on a national championship for Auburn at La Costa

 

   Auburn was nearly there a year ago.

   The Tigers finished in 10^th place, just nine shots out of a playoff for the final spot in the match-play bracket in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Adding a couple of talented freshmen who immediately brought into an established team dynamic enabled Auburn to take it from almost there to the very top of the heap in Division I college golf.

   Auburn gutted out a 3-2 victory over Atlantic Coast Conference power Florida State Wednesday at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa’s North Course in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match to claim the first national crown in the program’s history.

   It was Auburn’s 10^th tournament victory of the wraparound 2023-2024 season and the seventh straight team crown for the Tigers, including a stunning postseason sweep of the Southeast Conference Championship, the Baton Rouge Regional and the NCAA Championship.

   Nick Clinard, in his 15^th year as the head coach at Auburn, pressed all the right buttons in setting his five-man lineup for the showdown with Florida State.

   He put his fabulous freshman, Jackson Koivun of Chapel Hill, N.C. and No. 4 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), in the third spot in the lineup and Koivun responded by putting the first point on the board for Auburn with a 5 and 4 victory over Brett Roberts, a senior from Coral Springs, Fla. and No. 94 in the WAGR.

   Every point in an NCAA Championship Final Match is important, but there is something about getting that first point up there that seems to give the rest of the team a psychological boost.

   Brendan Valdes, a junior from Orlando, Fla. and No. 23 in the WAGR, came up huge with a 4 and 3 victory over Frederik Kjettrup, a senior from Denmark and No. 13 in the WAGR. It was a couple of heavyweights going at it and Auburn got the point.

   The other freshman in the Auburn lineup, Australian Josiah Gilbert, dropped a 2 and 1 decision to Florida State’s Tyler Weaver, a freshman from England who completed a 3-0 run through the match-play bracket at La Costa.

   Redshirt junior Carson Bacha, the 2019 PIAA Class AAA champion as a senior at Central York and No. 62 in the WAGR, has been right in the middle of Auburn’s rise from a competitive SEC program – and competing in the SEC is no easy feat – to national champion.

   Bacha had a look for birdie inside 10 feet on the 18^th green at the North Course that would have sent his match with Cole Anderson, a redshirt junior from Camden, Maine and No. 79 in the WAGR, to a 19^th hole, but couldn’t get it to fall. Anderson’s 1-up victory tied things up at 2-2.

   Clinard went with J.M. Butler, an accomplished senior from Louisville, Ky. and No. 38 in the WAGR, in the anchor position against Florida State’s Luke Clanton, a formidable sophomore from Hialeah, Fla. and No. 8 in the WAGR.

   Wins at the 12^th and 15^th holes broke open a close match and gave Butler a 2-up lead and suddenly they were the only two players left on the golf course.

   When Butler stuck a 9-iron shot to 10 feet on the 17^th hole, it was all but over. Moments later, Butler completed a 2 and 1 victory and Auburn had won its first national championship.

   You could argue that the addition of Koivun to the lineup was all it took to put Auburn over the top.

   The kid had himself a day Tuesday when he added the Fred Haskins Award to the Ben Hogan Award he had already won and secured the clinching point in Auburn’s quarterfinal victory over Virginia and in its semifinal win over Ohio State.

   But Clinard was just as quick to credit Alex Vogelsong, a fifth-year player from Palm City, Fla. who wasn’t in the lineup for the Final Match, with giving the Tigers the kind of leaderboard that is critically important to any national championship run.

   It wasn’t a huge surprise to see Bacha, a kid from York, in the middle of that run. When he was a sophomore at Central York, Bacha did not compete individually in the state tournament because the state regional, since abandoned, conflicted with an American Junior Golf Association event. He was trying to get noticed at a national level.

   But Bacha did stick with the team and Central York was a runnerup to Unionville in the PIAA Class AAA team race that year. The team mattered more to him than his possible individual accomplishments. Two years later, Bacha, a commitment to Auburn secured, put his name alongside those of Arnold Palmer, Jay Sigel and Jim Furyk, as a PIAA individual champion.

   Pennsylvania is sending another talented kid to the SEC later this summer when Downingtown West’s Nick Gross, the 2021 PIAA Class AAA champion, joins the program at Alabama. Expect his impact to be immediate.

   It was a tremendous run for Florida State, which had reached the semifinals a year ago before falling to cross-state rival and eventual champion Florida.

   A loss in the semifinals, a loss in the Final Match. The next logical step is easy enough to figure out and, assuming Clanton, Anderson and Weaver are returning, there is talent and experience at the highest levels in the lineup.