The reigning NCAA men’s and women’s champions showed Tuesday
they still have some fight left even if they arrived at the East Lake Cup as
the lowest-ranked teams in their respective fields.
Oregon, which captured the men’s title on its home course
last spring, claimed a 3-2 victory over Vanderbilt, the top-ranked team by Golfstat, in one semifinal at the
7,450-yard, par-72 East Lake layout. The No. 18 Ducks will get a shot at
defending East Lake Dup champion, No. 4 Illinois, which knocked off No. 12
Texas, 3-2, in the other semifinal, in Wednesday’s title match.
The Washington women, who arrived in Atlanta unranked,
stunned No. 3 Stanford, 4-1, in a rematch of last spring’s title match in one semifinal
Tuesday. The Huskies will take on No. 23 Duke, which claimed a 3-2 win over No.
3 UCLA in a battle of heavyweights in the other semifinal, in Wednesday’s title
match.
The Oregon men finished 13 shots behind Stanford in Monday’s
18 holes of stroke play that determined Tuesday’s matchups. But the Ducks still
seemed to have some of the match-play magic that propelled them to the NCAA
crown last spring.
Oregon got a 2 and 1 win by Edwin Yi, a sophomore from
Beaumont, Calif., over John Augenstein, a freshman from Owensboro, Ky., a 2-up
victory from Ryan Grunford, a redshirt sophomore from Pleasanton, Calif., over
Theo Humphrey, a junior from Greenwich, Conn., and a 2-up victory by Wyndham
Clark, a redshirt senior from Denver, over Will Gordon, a sophomore from
Davidson, N.C.
Vanderbilt got a 5 and 4 win by Patrick Martin, a sophomore
from Birmingham, Ala., over Nigel Lett, a redshirt senior from Beaverton, Ore.,
and a 2 and 1 win by Matthias Schwab, a senior from Austria, over Sulman Raza,
a redshirt senior from Eugene, Ore. Raza was the hometown hero who sunk the
putt that clinched the Ducks’ victory over Texas in the NCAA final last spring.
The Oregon-Illinois match will be a rematch of an NCAA
semifinal match won by the Ducks on their way to the national championship.
Illinois got the jump on Texas Tuesday when Michael Feagles,
a freshman from Scottsdale, Ariz., knocked off Scottie Scheffler, a junior from
Dallas, 3 and 1. Scheffler had fired a 6-under 66 to claim the East Lake Cup
individual title Monday.
The Fighting Illini also got a 2 and 1 victory by Edoardo
Lipparelli, a sophomore from Italy, over Steven Chervony, a sophomore from Boca
Raton, Fla., and a 2 and 1 win by Dylan Meyer, a junior from Evansville, Ind.,
over Taylor Funk, a junior from Ponte Vedre, Fla., that clinched the victory
for Illinois.
Texas got a 2 and 1 win by Gavin Hall, a senior from
Pittsford, N.Y., over Bryan Baumgarten, a freshman from Granite Bay, Calif.,
and a 4 and 2 win by Doug Ghim, a junior from Arlington Heights, Ill., over
Nick Hardy, a junior from Northbrook, Ill., in a battle of two really strong
players.
The Washington women weren’t in the same zip code as
Stanford in Monday’s stroke-play round that set the pairings for Tuesday’s
semifinals. The Huskies were 34 shots back of the Cardinal, who claimed the top
seed with a 6-under 282 total. Maybe Stanford’s Andrea Lee and Casey Danielson
wore each other out in their six-hole playoff that Lee eventually won to claim
the individual title.
Lee, a freshman from Hermosa Beach, Calif., accounted for
Stanford’s lone point with a 5 and 4 victory over Eunwon Park, a freshman from
Tenafly, N.J. Lee is no ordinary freshman as she played on the U.S. Curtis Cup
team and the U.S. entry that finished sixth at the World Amateur Team Championship,
among other accomplishments in a busy summer.
But the rest was all Washington. The Huskies got a 2 and 1
win by Ellen Takada, a freshman from Irvine, Calif., over Danielson, a senior
from Osceola, Wis., a 3 and 1 triumph by Julianne Alvarez, a sophomore from New
Zealand, over Sierra Kersten, a sophomore from Spokane, Wash., a 5 and 4 win by
Sarah Rhee, a sophomore from Seattle, over Albane Valenzuela, a talented
freshman from Switzerland, and a 5 and 4 win by Wenyung Keh, like Alvarez, a
sophomore from New Zealand, over Shannon Aubert, a junior from Stuart, Fla.
There were Curtis Cup players from both sides of the
Atlantic all over the place in Duke’s win over UCLA in the other semifinal.
UCLA got the jump with a 3 and 2 win by Great Britain &
Ireland Curtis Cupper Bronte Law, a senior from England, over Sandy Choi, a
senior from South Korea. The Bruins’ other point came from Clare Legaspi, a
freshman from the Philippines who edged Lisa Maguire, a junior from Ireland,
2-up. Lisa Maguire did not play for GB&I in this year’s Curtis Cup, but she
has in the past.
Her twin sister Leona, also a junior from Ireland, did help
GB&I beat the U.S. this year and she claimed a 4 and 2 victory over Mariel
Galdiano, a freshman from Pearl City, Hawaii. Galdiano was a U.S. Curtis Cupper
and the qualifying medalist at this summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling
Green Golf Club. Galdiano was also on the U.S. team with Stanford’s Lee and
South Carolina’s Katelyn Dambaugh that finished sixth in the World Amateur Team
Championship. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll be seeing these two playing
in an LPGA event on TV in the not-too-distant future.
Duke got a 5 and 3 win by reigning NCAA individual champion
Virginia Elena Carta, a sophomore from Italy, over Lilia Vu, a sophomore from Fountain
Valley, Calif. Carta fell on the 36th hole to South Korea’s Eun
Jeong Seong in the final of the Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green.
But the clinching point for the Dookies came from Ana Belac,
a freshman from Slovenia who claimed a 3 and 2 win over Bethany Wu, a sophomore
from Diamond Bar, Calif. Wu is yet another U.S. Curtis Cupper who played in
this match.
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