Oklahoma's win over Oklahoma State in men's final prevents an Oklahoma State sweep in East Lake Cup

    Leave it the Oklahoma men’s golf team to prevent in-state rival Oklahoma State from completing a sweep of the men’s and women’s titles in the East Lake Cup, which wrapped up Wednesday under the watchful eye of The Golf Channel’s cameras at the East Lake Club in Atlanta.

   The Sooners, No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings, edged Big 12 rival Oklahoma State, 3-2, in the men’s final, Jaxon Dowell, a redshirt freshman from Edmond, Okla., finishing off the win for Oklahoma by defeating the Cowboys’ Eugenio Chacarra, a senior from Spain and No. 8 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, on the 19^th hole.

   The No.-2 ranked Cowgirls, meanwhile, did bring the East Lake Cup women’s crown back to Stillwater as they edged Atlantic Coast Conference power Duke, ranked 19^th, 3-2 in the final.

   I’ve spent most of the last few weeks running around Pennsylvania watching the Keystone State’s best scholastic players battling it out in the PIAA postseason and the Bert Linton Inter-Ac League individual championship. I’ve limited most of my posts on the college scene to the City 6 teams and the Penn State men’s and women’s programs. Beats the heck out of the fall of 2020 when most of the local college programs were unable to compete due to the coronavirus pandemic.

   The East Lake Cup was one of the few very few big college tournaments that was played in the fall of 2020. With the Big Ten, the ACC and the Pac-12 all shutting down their golf programs, the East Lake Cup, which normally brings together the four semifinalists from the previous spring’s NCAA Championship, offered the top-four ranked teams when the ill-fated 2019-2020 season came to a premature end at the pandemic’s outset, a spot in the field.

   It may seem a little presumptuous to label the East Lake Cup as a preview for college golf’s postseason, which is still six months or so away, but the two teams that won the East Lake Cup in 2020, the Pepperdine men and the Mississippi women, were crowned NCAA champions in May of 2021 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. Just sayin’.

   The East Lake Cup mimics the NCAA Championship with a round of stroke play Monday setting the field for two semifinal matches Tuesday with the finals and third-place matches being played Wednesday. The Golf Channel treats it like the big-time event that it is and me, I get a chance to catch up with some of the premier programs in college golf.

   Pepperdine, ranked seventh, has several holdovers from its NCAA Championship team and all five members of the Waves’ starting lineup are inside the WAGR’s top 100.

   Pepperdine earned the top seed in Monday’s qualifying round with a solid 5-under 283 total in the typical five-score-four format over the 7,434-yard, par-72 East Lake layout.

   The Waves were led by Joe Highsmith, a senior from Lakewood, Wash. and No. 14 in the WAGR, and Joey Verzich, a redshirt senior from El Cajon, Calif. and No. 28 in the WAGR, in qualifying with Highsmith finishing in third place with a 3-under 69 and Verzich ending up in a three-way tie for fifth with a 1-under 71.

   That earned them a date in the semifinals with Oklahoma, which finished in a tie for third with Oklahoma State in the qualifying round, each posting a 4-over 292, in a rematch of last spring’s Final Match at Grayhawk.

   This time, though, it was the Sooners who had the edge, beating Pepperdine, 3.5-1.5, to earn a spot in the East Lake Cup final.

   Pepperdine got a key early victory when Dylan Menante, a junior from Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 19 in the WAGR, edged Chris Gotterup, a redshirt senior from Little Silver, N.J. and No. 79 in the WAGR, in 19 holes.

   Followers of Big Ten golf will recognize Gotterup as one of the top players in the conference at Rutgers for most of his career there. Gotterup decided to use the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA to make up for the lost spring of 2020 at Oklahoma. And he certainly made an impact in the East Lake Cup.

   Gotterup carded a bogeyless 4-under 68 to share medalist honors in qualifying with Arizona State’s Preston Summerhays, a freshman from Scottsdale, Ariz. and No. 79 in the WAGR. Summherhays was an impressive winner of the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.

   The Sooners, though, won three of the other matches and halved a fourth to come away with the victory.

   Stephen Campbell Jr., a redshirt freshman from Richmond, Texas, knocked off William Mouw, a junior from Chino, Calif. and No. 52 in the WAGR, 3 and 1, Dowell claimed a 4 and 2 decision over Verzich, and Drew Goodman, a freshman home boy from Norman, Okla., got the clinching point with a 4 and 3 win over Derek Hitchner, a senior from Minneapolis, Minn. and No. 96 in the WAGR. Logan McAllister, a senior from Oklahoma City, Okla., battled Highsmith to a draw.

   No. 5 Oklahoma State, meanwhile, made it Bedlam – the name used mostly in reference to an Oklahoma-Oklahoma State football game, but which certainly applies when these two heavyweights of college golf get it on – in the title match with a 3.5-1.5 victory over the Pac-12’s Arizona State in the other semifinal.

   The Cowboys got a couple of key victories when Chacarra, who had finished in fourth place in qualifying with a 2-under 70, knocked off Summerhays, the qualifying co-medalist, 4 and 3, and Brian Stark, a junior from Kingsburg, Calif. and No. 41 in the WAGR, edged the Sun Devils’ David Puig, a senior from Spain and No. 5 in the WAGR, 2 and 1. Stark reached the quarterfinals of last summer’s U.S. Amateur at Oakmont Country Club.

   Oklahoma State’s other full point came from Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, a senior from Denmark who edged Ryggs Johnston, a junior from Libby, Mont. and No. 50 in the WAGR, 1-up.

   Oklahoma, however, had the edge on its rival in the final. McAllister and Gotterup finished off their opponents, Stark and Hazen Newman, a junior from Las Vegas, respectively, on the tough par-3 15^th hole, McAllister completing a 5 and 3 victory and Gotterup finishing off a 4 and 3 decision.

   When Dowell rallied to send his match with Chacarra to extra holes, they were sent to the same 15^th hole for the 19^th hole of the match. Dowell’s tee shot found the green and Chacarra was bunkered and Dowell got the clinching point with a par.

   They’ll meet again, these two. Oklahoma State was missing two of its top two players, Bo Jin, a sophomore from China and the runnerup to Summerhays in that U.S. Junior Amateur at Inverness, and Aman Gupta, a senior from Concord, N.C. and a semifinalist in the 2020 U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes. Pretty sure Jin was sidelined with a minor injury and Gupta didn’t survive Oklahoma State’s qualifier for the East Lake Cup. That’s how competitive programs like that are.

   They’ll square off in the Big 12 Championship at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity, Texas. And I won’t be surprised a little bit if they’re among the last eight still standing for match play in the NCAA Championship, which will once again be contested at Grayhawk.

   Pepperdine claimed a 3-2 decision over Arizona State in the third-place match.

   The Oklahoma State women, No. 2 in the latest Golfstat rankings, were strong right from the very start at East Lake as Rina Tatematsu, a sophomore from Thailand and No. 65 in the Women’s WAGR, claimed individual medalist honors in Monday’s qualifying with a sparkling 5-under 67, leading the Cowgirls to the top seed in match play.

   Maddison Hinson-Tolchard, a sophomore from Australia, finished in a tie for second place in qualifying with a 1-under 71 over an East Lake layout that measured 6,297 yards for the women. The Cowgirls finished with a 1-under 287 total, five shots better than reigning NCAA champion Ole Miss, the No.-21 ranked Southeastern Conference representative.

   That earned Oklahoma State a semifinal meeting with a shorthanded Arizona team. Team Hou, sisters Vivian, a junior, and Yu-Sung, a fifth-year player, had competed in the LPGA Qualifying School’s Stage II and weren’t quite ready to go at East Lake for the No. 16 Wildcats. With Yu-Sang on the bag, Vivian reached the final of last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y. before falling to Kentucky’s Jensen Castle.

   Hinson-Tolchard, who earned Oklahoma State’s lone point in its 4-1 loss to Ole Miss in the Final Match at Grayhawk last spring, claimed a 5 and 4 verdict over Carolina Melgrati, a freshman from Italy and No. 44 in the Women’s WAGR, Isabella Fierro, a junior from Mexico and No. 47 in the Women’s WAGR, edged Caitlin Whitehead, a freshman from England, on the 19^th hole and Hailey Jones, a junior from Dallas, earned a 3 and 2 decision over Elinor Sudow, a graduate student from Sweden, to give Oklahoma State a 3-2 edge on Arizona and a spot in the East Lake final.

   In the other semifinal, sophomore Phoebe Brinker, who starred scholastically at Archmere Academy, got things started for Duke with a 2-up victory over Natacha Host Husted, a freshman from Denmark, as the Blue Devils rolled to a 4-1 victory over Ole Miss.

   Brinker was among the best freshmen in the country last season, even with the ACC keeping her off the course for the fall campaign. Brinker finished in a tie for fifth place in the individual standings in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk and helped the Blue Devils reach the semifinals in match play.

   Anne Chen, a sophomore from Sugar Land, Texas, pulled out a 3 and 2 victory over Julia Johnson, a senior from St. Gabriel, La. and No. 14 in the Women’s WAGR. Johnson was clearly one of the emotional leaders in Mississippi’s unlikely run to an NCAA crown last spring.

   Megan Furtney, a junior from St. Charlies, Ill., claimed a 3 and 2 decision over Andrea Lignell, a junior from Sweden, and Erica Shepherd, a senior from Greenwood, Ind. and No. 43 in the Women’s WAGR, pulled out a 1-up victory over Chiara Tamburlini, a junior from Switzerland, to account for Duke’s points.

   Duke freshman Rylie Heflin, a former scholastic rival of Brinker at Tower Hill School, dropped a 4 and 3 decision to Ellen Hume, a senior from England. Heflin, an Avondale, Chester County resident, was filling in for Gina Kim, Duke’s standout senior, who, like Arizona’s Hou sisters, couldn’t make the quick turnaround from LPGA Qualifying School’s Stage II tournament.

   The final was a rematch of last spring’s semifinals at Grayhawk where the Cowgirls blanked Duke, 5-0. Fierro made a big statement in the final with a 7 and 6 victory over Brinker. Hinson-Tolchard completed a 2-0 run in match play with a 3 and 1 victory over Furtney and Jones got the clinching point with a 2 and 1 verdict over Heflin.

   Shepherd capped a very solid fall campaign with a 2-up victory over Tatematsu, the qualifying medalist, and Chen pulled out a 1-up decision over Caley McGinty, a junior from England and No. 24 in the Women’s WAGR. Shepherd, winner of the 2017 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at Boone Valley Golf Club in Augusta, Mo., and Chen both went 2-0 in match play for the Blue Devils at East Lake.

   The addition of McGinty to the Oklahoma State lineup is just one of the reasons the Cowgirls completed a perfect run through the fall campaign as they won all four tournaments in which they competed. Oklahoma State head coach Greg Robertson originally recruited McGinty to Kent State when he was running that program before coming home to his alma mater two summers ago. McGinty was a member of the Great Britain & Ireland team that fell, 12.5-7.5, to the United States in the Curtis Cup Match at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales in August.

   Arizona claimed a 3-2 victory over Ole Miss in the third-place match.

   There’s still a few events left on the fall college golf schedule, but the beginning of the spring campaign in late January can’t get here soon enough.