Pepperdine rides the Wave to an NCAA crown with victory over Oklahoma in Final Match at Grayhawk

    It had to be a devastating blow to Pepperdine’s players when the most promising of seasons came to an abrupt halt in the middle of March of 2020 because of an unseen killer that was making its way around the world.

   The Waves were ranked No. 1 in the country by Golfstat when the season ended. Sahith Theegala, their best player and ultimately the Fred Haskins Award winner, was already in his fifth season. Theegala couldn’t put his professional ambitions on hold for a whole year.

   Somewhere Wednesday Theegala was rooting home Pepperdine and the talented youngsters he undoubtedly had mentored as the Waves put the disappointment of the spring of 2020 behind them and won the second national championship in the history of the program with a 3-2 victory over top-ranked Oklahoma at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   The reality, though, is that Pepperdine, which arrived at Grayhawk ranked ninth after punching its ticket to the NCAA Championship with a hard-fought fourth-place finish in the Cle Elum Regional at the Suncadia Resort’s Tumble Creek Course, never really skipped a beat from the early part of the ill-fated spring semester of 2020 right up until the Waves were hoisting the NCAA Championship trophy Wednesday afternoon.

   Pepperdine capped a limited fall schedule – many conferences wouldn’t let their players compete at all in the fall – with a victory over the same Oklahoma team it beat Wednesday in the final of the East Lake Cup at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

   The Waves won the West Coast Conference title and, after struggling a little, but getting through at Tumble Creek, they earned themselves a berth in the match-play bracket at Grayhawk with the best team round of the tournament in Monday’s final round of stroke play, a 9-under 271 that gave them the third seed in match play and, perhaps more importantly, momentum heading into match play.

   After gritty wins over Florida State and Oklahoma State in Tuesday’s quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, the Waves were in the Final Match. Maybe it was the East Lake Cup experience, but the moment never seemed too big for Pepperdine.

   To win a national crown in the match-play era is to pull through so many tests along the way and Pepperdine passed them all, finally pulling out the victory over the Big 12 runnerup that arrived at Grayhawk with the No.-1 ranking, the same No.-1 ranking Pepperdine had when the 2019-2020 season came to its premature end.

   “It felt like we just didn’t get to see it through last year and these guys came back better,” Pepperdine head coach Michael Beard, who played four years for the Waves, told the Pepperdine website. “It really wasn’t me, they just came back with more fire and more determination and motivation. These guys are so good, we don’t have to do much to motivate them.”

   Oklahoma actually put the first point on the board when Jonathan Brightwell, a redshirt senior from Charlotte, N.C. and No. 43 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), edged Dylan Menante, a sophomore from Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 61 in the WAGR, 1-up.

   Brightwell, who played four years at North Carolina-Greensboro before taking a fifth year at Oklahoma, had been the Sooners’ best player the last couple of weeks, finishing in a tie for second place in the individual chase in the Albuquerque Regional and tied for sixth in 72 holes of stroke play over the 7,289-yard, par-70 Grayhawk layout.

   Joe Highsmith, a junior from Lakewood, Wash. and No. 65 in the WAGR, then quickly evened the score with a 4 and 3 victory over Garett Reband, a graduate student from Fort Worth, Texas and No. 6 in the WAGR. Highsmith had delivered the clinching point in the Waves’ 4-1 victory over Oklahoma State in Tuesday’s semifinals.

   William Mouw, a sophomore from Chino, Calif. and No. 38 in the WAGR, then put a second point on the board for Pepperdine with a 4 and 3 victory over his U.S. Walker Cup teammate Quade Cummins, a redshirt senior from Weatherford, Okla. and No. 16 in the WAGR.

   Mouw had some tough assignments in match play at Grayhawk. He battled another of his teammates from the winning U.S. team in last month’s Walker Cup Match at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla., Florida State’s John Pak, No. 4 in the WAGR, and took the match to the final hole before Pak claimed a 1-up victory in the quarterfinals. Against Oklahoma State in the semifinals, Mouw ended up battling freshman Bo Jin, No. 54 in the WAGR and the runnerup in the individual chase at Grayhawk, to a draw.

   The clinching point in the Final Match was delivered by Clay Feagler, a redshirt senior from Laguna Niguel, Calif. Feagler was one of the many players in college golf who accepted the NCAA’s offer of a fifth year of eligibility to make up for the spring of their senior season lost to the pandemic. Some, like Oklahoma’s Brightwell, took that extra year at another school. Feagler, though, had unfinished business at Pepperdine.

   Feagler trailed Oklahoma’s Ben Lorenz, a freshman from Peoria, Ariz., 2-down through 11 holes. But Feagler won three straight holes to turn a 2-down deficit into a 1-up advantage. Lorenz, though, battled back, squaring the match with a birdie at the 15^th hole. By this point, it was apparent that this match might very well decide the national championship.

   And Feagler had the goods. He retook the lead with a win at the 16^th hole and then holed a tough putt on the 17^th to take a 1-up lead to the 18^th hole. Feagler calmly reached the par-4 18^th hole in regulation and, after Lorenz’s 35-foot birdie try came up short, Feagler lagged his birdie try and was conceded a par and a 1-up victory.

   The last match was abandoned with Oklahoma’s Logan McAllister, a junior from Oklahoma City, Okla., holding a 1-up lead on Pepperdine’s Joey Vrzich, a senior from El Cajon, Calif. McAllister’s ace at the par-3 eighth hole was the second hole-in-one of his week at Grayhawk.

   Feagler’s ace at the eighth hole in his semifinal win over Oklahoma State’s Austin Eckroat, No. 12 in the WAGR, might be remembered as the shot of the tournament for Pepperdine. Or perhaps it was Highsmith’s approach to the 18^th hole from a bunker with the yawning water hazard between him and the flag in his clinching win over Aman Gupta, No. 98 in the WAGR, in the victory over Oklahoma State.

   But in moments large and small, Pepperdine caught the Wave and rode it all the way to a national championship.