Furr, Lipscomb lead the way as Alabama claims team crown in The Blessings Intercollegiate Invitational

    It’s been nearly seven months since I’ve rounded up a college golf tournament, so forgive me if I’m a little rusty …

   The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark., site of the last NCAA Championship that was contested in the long-ago time of the spring of 2019, played host to The Blessings Intercollegiate Invitational, which concluded last Wednesday.

   There have been a smattering of college golf tournaments played this fall, but it’s been a halting return to the golf course, at best, for most programs in this the year of the coronavirus pandemic. Kind of hard to be sending your golf team to a tournament when you barely have any kids on campus.

   Of course, comparing the Southeastern Conference to the rest of the colleges in America, particularly when it comes to sports, is kind of unfair. As in many sports, the SEC has the deepest pool of talent, top to bottom, of any other golf conference in the country. The SEC has been the most determined conference in America when it comes to getting its athletes back on the field of play.

   I’m not sure that’s such a good idea when it comes to football, but when it comes to golf it’s become fairly obvious that the game can be played pretty safely in the midst of this pandemic, which shows no signs of slowing down. So, I’m going to celebrate The Blessings Intercollegiate, a gathering of the SEC’s men’s and women’s teams, which I hear was televised by The Golf Channel

   Alabama, fueled by one of the few sub-par team rounds of the tournament, a 6-under-par 282 in the second round, held off Tennessee by five shots to earn the team crown. The Crimson Tide closed with a 7-over 295 for a 4-over 868 total. The Volunteers, who were ranked 24^th by Golfstat when the ill-fated 2019-2020 season came to a sudden end in March, posted a final round of 10-over 298 to earn runnerup honors at 9-over 873.

   Alabama was outside the top 25 when play was halted in March, but trust me, the Crimson Tide would have figured out a way to get to the NCAA Championship that was scheduled to be played at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Alabama had reached the Final Match in the 2018 NCAA Championship, which was won by a powerful Oklahoma State team on its home course at the Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. And a couple of the holdovers from that Alabama team, Wilson Furr, a senior from Jackson, Miss., and Davis Shore, a senior from Knoxville, Tenn., played key roles in the Crimson Tide’s team win at The Blessings.

   Furr, you might recall, fired a brilliant 9-under 62 at Bandon Trails to claim medalist honors in the U.S. Amateur with an 11-under 132 total.

   Furr and Tyler Lipscomb, a sophomore from Carrollton, Ga., were the top finishers for Alabama as each landed among the group tied for 10^th place at even-par 216. Furr had a pair of 1-under 71s in the first two rounds before backing off a little with a 2-over 74 in the final round. Lipscomb bounced back from an opening-round 75 with a sparkling 3-under 69 that sparked the Crimson Tide’s second-round team surge before matching par in the final round with a 72.

   Tennessee had the best team round of the week in the opening round with an 8-under 280. The Volunteers backed off with a second-round score of 7-over 295, but still only trailed Alabama by two shots heading into the final round before closing with a 298.

   Arkansas, playing on its home course at The Blessings, had the best score of the final round, a 1-over 289, to finish three shots behind Tennessee in third place at 12-over 876. South Carolina finished off a solid week with a 4-over 292 in the final round to finish in fourth place with a 14-over 878 total.

   It was four more shots back to Texas A&M and Vanderbilt, which finished in a tie for fifth place, each registering an 18-over 882 total. They were the top two teams in the Golfstat rankings when the 2019-’20 season shut down, the Aggies at No. 8 and the Commodores at No. 9.

   They were also the only two SEC teams to make it to match play in that 2019 NCAA Championship at The Blessings. Vanderbilt defeated Texas A&M in the quarterfinals before the Commodores came up short in the semifinals, falling to eventual national champion Stanford.

   Texas A&M matched par in the opening round with a 288 and was in second place behind Tennessee before the Aggies fell back with rounds of 296 and 298 in the second and third rounds, respectively. Vanderbilt got into contention with a 1-over 289 in the second round before closing with a 296.

   Alabama finished with four players in the top 20 in the individual standings. Thomas Ponder, a sophomore from Dothan, Ala., backed up Furr and Lipscomb as he finished alone in 12^th place at 1-over 217. Ponder was 3-under through two rounds after adding a 71 to his opening-round 70 before closing with a 76.

   Shore, the veteran of that run to the Final Match in 2018, was two shots behind Ponder in the group tied for 16^th place at 3-over 219. Shore contributed a 1-under 71 to the Tide’s second-round surge before closing with a 1-over 73.

   Rounding out the Alabama lineup was J.D. Cave, a freshman from Mobile, Ala. who finally shook off his nerves in the final round with a 76 thate left him alone in 89^th place at 242. Alabama played without its star sophomore Canon Claycomb, the Bowling Green, Ky. phenom. Not sure why he wasn’t there, but I don’t think it’s a long-term loss.

   It was an emotional individual victory for Kentucky’s Alex Goff, a sophomore from Kings Mountain, Ga. Goff built a big lead when he added a scintillating 7-under 65 to his opening-round 69 that got him to 10-under through two rounds. Goff struggled to a 76 in the final round, but still claimed a two-shot victory, his first college win, with a 6-under 210 total.

   He carried the bag of Cullan Brown, a Kentucky player who died tragically in June at 20 after losing his battle with bone cancer.

   Texas A&M’s Dan Erickson, a senior from Whittier, Calif., and Tennessee’s Hunter Wolcott, a redshirt junior from Burns, Tenn., both closed with a 1-under 71 to earn a share of runnerup honors at 4-under 212, two shots behind Goff.

   Davis Thompson, the Georgia senior from Auburn, Ala. who made such a big splash with his 1-under 69 in the opening round of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club last month, shared fourth place with Tennessee’s Bryce Lewis, a redshirt freshman from Hendersonville, Tenn., at 3-under 213.

   Thompson, No. 3 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), added a pair of 2-under 70s to his opening-round 73. Lewis opend with a 3-under 69 before matching par in each of the last two rounds with a pair of 72s.

   Sohth Carolina’s Caleb Proveaux, a graduate student from Lexington, S.C., and Vanderbilt’s William Moll, a sophomore from Houston, finished in a tie for sixth place at 2-under 214. Proveaux had back-to-back 2-under 70s in the first two rounds before closing with a 74. Moll struggled to an opening-round 75 before firing rounds of 69 and 70 to get this share of sixth place.

   If the name of Arkansas’ Segundo Oliva Pinto, a junior from Argentina, sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the player who lost his rouind-of-16 match in the U.S. Amateur to eventual champion Tyler Strafaci when Oliva Pinto’s caddy was ruled to have tested the sand in a bunker on the 18^th hole at Bandon Dunes, costing his man the hole and the match.

   Oliva Pinto finished in a tie for eighth place with Mississippi State’s Ford Clegg, a sophomore from Birmingham, Ala., at 1-under 215. After opening with a 2-under 70, Oliva Pinto matched par in the second round with a 72 before closing with a 1-over 73. Clegg only trailed Kentucky’s Goff by four shots after adding a sparkling 4-under 68 to his opening-round 70. Clegg struggled a little in the final  round with a 77.

   Also making the trip for South Carolina was Jack Wall, a sophomore from Brielle, N.J. who saw his bid in the 2019 BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Stonewall halted by an overturned dump truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. (True story and a long story, but you can revisit it by checking out my posts from that Philly Am in June of 2019).

   Wall was solid at The Blessings, opening with a 75 before struggling to a 78 in the second round and closing with a 1-over 73 that left him in the group tied for 37^th place at 10-over 226.