Vanderbilt keeps postseason roll going, grabs lead following opening round of NCAA Championship at Grayhawk

    Vanderbilt, No. 3 in the latest Golfstat rankings, continued its postseason roll as the Southeastern Conference champion Commodores grabbed the lead following the opening round of the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. with a 2-over 282 total.

   With three players among the top eight in the individual standings, Vanderbilt, coming off a victory in the Palm Beach Regional at PGA National, took a three-shot lead over No. 27 Oregon, out of the Pac-12, and SEC rival Auburn, ranked 17^th.

   The top 15 teams following Sunday’s third round will survive the cut and play in Monday’s final round with the top eight finishers following 72 holes advancing to match play, which gets under way Tuesday.

   Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent, a freshman from Birmingham, Ala. and No. 14 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), Cole Sherwood, a sophomore from Austin, Texas and No. 45 in the WAGR, and William Moll, a junior from Houston, led the way for Vanderbilt as they each matched par over the 7,289-yard, par-70 Grayhawk layout with a 70 to land among a group of seven players tied for eighth place in the individual standings.

   Auburn was led by one of the co-leaders in the individual chase, Brendan Valdes, a freshman from Orlando, Fla. who got a share of the top spot with Kansas’ Henry Hiller, a senior from New Zealand, both of whom opened with a sparkling 2-under 68.

   Valdes offset two bogeys with four birdies in his round. Hiller got off to an adventurous start as he made six birdies, two bogeys and just one par on the outgoing nine at Grayhawk. He settled down a little on the back nine with three more bogeys and one more birdie, the seventh of his round.

   Hiller’s strong showing helped the No. 25 Jayhawks, a Big 12 entry, get a share of fourth place in the team standings with another Pac 12 entry Arizona, ranked 26^th, each landing on 6-over 286. The Wildcats are coming off an impressive team win in the Bryan Regional as a six seed at the Traditions Golf Club.

   Big 12 champion Oklahoma, the No. 1 team in the country, was a shot behind Kansas and Arizona in sixth place at 7-over 287. The Sooners are coming off a team win on their home course, the Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club, in the Norman Regional.

   North Carolina, ranked No. 5 out of the Atlantic Coast Conference, was a shot behind Oklahoma in seventh place with an 8-over 288 total.

   Oklahoma’s cross-state and Big 12 rival, Oklahoma State, ranked second, was a shot behind North Carolina in eighth place with a 9-over 289. The Cowboys are coming off a team win in the Columbus Regional on the challenging Scarlet Course at The Ohio State University Golf Club.

   Backing up Vanderbilt’s trio at even-par 70 for the Commodores was Reid Davenport, a senior and, like Sherwood, an Austin, Texas guy, and No. 41 in the WAGR. Davenport recorded a solid 2-over 72 to join the group tied for 32^nd place and was the final counter for Vanderbilt.

   Rounding out the Vanderbilt lineup was Harrison Ott, a fifth-year player from Brookfield, Wis. who ended up among the group tied for 62^nd place with a 4-over 74.

   Oklahoma State’s Bo Jin, a sophomore from China and No. 29 in the WAGR, headed a group of five players tied for third place, a shot behind Valdes and Hiller at 1-under 69. Jin was the runnerup to NCAA individual champion Turk Pettit of Clemson a year ago at Grayhawk.

   Joining Jin at 1-under were Arizona teammates Chase Sienkiewicz, a junior from Sacramento, Calif., and Chaz Aurilia, a senior from Phoenix, Ariz., Georgia Southern’s Mason Williams, a senior from Bridgeport, W.Va., and Liberty’s Kieran Vincent, a redshirt senior from Zimbabwe and No. 74 in the WAGR.

   A couple of Arizona State teammates, David Puig, a junior from Spain and No. 9 in the WAGR, and Cameron Sisk, a senior from San Diego and No. 40 in the WAGR, were part of the group tied for eighth place at even-par 70, along with the trio from Vanderbilt.

   Sisk finished in a tie for eighth place in the individual standings a year ago at Grayhawk, just a few miles from the Arizona State campus.

   Rounding out the group tied at even-par were Oregon’s Nate Stember, a junior from Portland, Ore., and Oklahoma’s Drew Goodman, a freshman home boy from Norman, Okla.

   Although his 6-over 76 was a throw-out for Auburn, sophomore Carson Bacha, the 2019 PIAA Class AAA champion as a senior at Central York, is in the lineup for the Tigers at Grayhawk.

   Liberty, out of the ASUN, got off to a good start as the Flames carded a 10-over 290 and shared ninth place with the Pac-12’s Arizona State.

   Liberty senior Zach Barbin, from the golfing Barbin family of Elkton, Md., was a throw-out for the Flames with an 81. Barbin won two of the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s major championships in the summer of 2020, taking the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Lancaster Country Club and the Patterson Cup at The 1912 Club.

 

Vannucci takes a major step with GAP Middle-Amateur victory in playoff with Flanigan at Jericho National

    Troy Vannucci was always a talented player in South Jersey circles, the Marlton, N.J. resident part of the deep stable of talent that calls Little Mill Country Club home.

   Then in the spring of 2019, Vannucci and his buddy from Marlton, Vince Kwon, took Bandon Dunes by storm, reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. Competing on a national stage in a United States Golf Association championship seemed to take Vannucci’s game to another level.

   The only thing missing was a Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) or a New Jersey State Golf Association (NJSGA) trophy to validate that sense that Vannucci was one of the better mid-amateur players around.

   The 30-year-old Vannucci got his validation and his name on a GAP major championship trophy this week as he prevailed in a four-hole aggregate playoff with Sean Flanigan, a Philadelphia Publinks Golf Association representative, to capture the title in GAP’s first major of 2022, the 39^th Middle-Amateur Championship, which wrapped up Wednesday at Jericho National Golf Club in New Hope.

   “It’s incredible,” Vannucci, a project manager for American Athletic Track and Turf, told the GAP website. “It’s hard to win (out here). They say it’s hard to win and you better believe it is. I’ve been knocking for a long time. My cousin Michael (Hyland) just says, ‘Keep on playing.’ He always encourages me.

  “(My uncle Tom, Michael’s father) has always encouraged me. You fail, go play the next one. Who cares.  Keep playing. Keep swinging. It’s eventually going to work out.”

   Vannucci had carded a solid 2-under 70 over the 6,817-yard, par-72 Jericho National layout in Tuesday’s opening round and was in a tie for third place, two shots behind Flanigan, who set the pace with a 4-under 68.

   The 41-year-old Flanigan, a Logan Township, N.J. resident, still appeared to be in command when a couple of loose shots gave Vannucci an opening.

   Flanigan’s tee shot at the 205-yard, par-3 15^th hole went over the green and led to a double bogey. He missed the green with his approach to the next hole, the 403-yard, par-4 16^th hole, and that led to a bogey.

   Up ahead, Vannucci was over the green at the 510-yard, par-5 17^th hole in two. His flop shot stopped a foot from the hole and his tap-in birdie suddenly gave him a share of the lead.

   Vannucci would post a 1-under 71 to get in the clubhouse with a 3-under 141 total as he caught Flanigan, who added a 1-over 73 to his opening-round 68.

   Vannucci immediately gained the advantage in the playoff as Flanigan’s approach to the 439-yard, par-4 10^th hole found the pond and led to a double bogey. Vannucci, as he had throughout the tournament, reached the green in regulation and two-putted for a par that gave him a two-shot lead.

   Vannucci and Flanigan each made par on the next two holes of the playoff, the 11^th and 12^th holes. Vannucci’s approach to the final hole of the playoff, the 18^th, found the putting green, 25 feet from the hole. Knowing two putts would win him the title, Vannucci’s lag putt tumbled into the cup for a closing birdie.

   St. Davids Golf Club’s Brian Gillespie, winner of the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Jericho National in 2001, and Yardley Country Club’s Christopher Ault finished two shots out of the playoff in a tie for third place, each landing on 1-under 143.

   Gillespie added a 2-under 70 to his opening-round 73 while Ault recorded a 1-under 71 in Wednesday’s final round after matching par with a 72 in the opening round.

   A couple of past GAP Middle-Amateur champions, Michael R. Brown Jr., the 2009 winner playing out of LuLu Country Club, and Matthew Mattare, the 2016 winner playing out of Saucon Valley Country Club, and Brandon Dalinka of The Ridge at Back Brook finished in a tie for fifth place, each landing on even-par 144.

   The steady Mattare registered a pair of even-par 72s while Brown bounced from an opening round of 3-over 75 with a 3-under 69 in Wednesday’s final round.

   Dalinka, who starred scholastically at Council Rock North and played college golf at North Carolina, added a 2-over 74 to his opening round of 70. Dalinka won the NJSGA Mid-Amateur crown in 2019.

   A couple of City 6 standouts of recent vintage, former Saint Joseph’s standout Russ Pilliod, playing out of LedgeRock Golf Club, and former Temple star John Barone, playing out of Glenmaura National Golf Club, finished in a tie for eighth place, each ending up with a 1-over 145 total.

   Pilliod, who was a scholastic standout at Berks Catholic, recorded the best score of the day in Wednesday’s second round with a 4-under 68 after struggling to a 77 in the opening round. Barone cooled off with a 75 in the second round after opening with a solid 2-under 70.

   Joseph Tigani of Fieldstone Golf Club finished alone in 10^th place with a 2-over 146 total as he bounced back from an opening-round 77 with a 3-under 69.

   Merion Golf Club’s Cole Willcox, a reinstated amateur, was a shot behind Flanigan following an opening round of 3-under 69 before falling back with a 78 in Wednesday’s second round as he shared 11^th place with Josh Anderson, another LedgeRock entry, each landing on 3-over 147. Anderson added a 1-under 71 in the second round to his opening-round 76.

   Pine Valley Golf Club’s Jeff Osberg, whose 2020 Middle-Amateur victory enabled him to complete a career sweep of GAP’s major championships, headed a group of six players tied for 13^th place at 4-over 148 total. Osberg matched par in Wednesday’s final round with a 72 after opening with a 76.

   Another Middle-Amateur champion, 2014 winner Peter Barron III, playing out of Galloway National Golf Club, joined the group at 4-over with a pair of 2-over 74s.

   Merion’s Michael Davis, the runnerup in the 2015 BMW Philadelphia Amateur, was also in the group at 148 as he added a 1-over 73 in Wednesday’s final round to his opening-round 75. Davis was a scholastic standout at Malvern Prep and starred collegiately at Princeton.

   Rounding out the group at 4-over were a couple of players out of the deep stable of talent at Philadelphia Cricket Club, Michael Carr and Alexander Kim, and Chris Balaga of Briarwood Golf Club.

   Carr had matched par in the opening round with a 72 before closing with a 76. Kim added a 1-over 73 in Wednesday’s final round to his opening-round 75. Balaga bounced back from an opening-round 77 with a 1-under 71.

 

 

 

Zhang delivers the clincher as Stanford defeats Oregon in Final Match at Grayhawk to claim NCAA title

    Stanford had been since so good in the beginning of the wraparound 2021-2022 season, winning every tournament it teed it up in the fall portion of the campaign as Rose Zhang, then as now the No. 1 player in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), joined a team that had earned the top seed in the match-play bracket at the NCAA Championship the previous spring.

   As good as the Cardinal had been then, even winning once with Zhang and last year’s NCAA individual champion, Rachel Heck, off preparing to represent the United States in The Spirit International, they were winning 54-hole stroke-play events.

   What would happen, though, when it came to match play? The pre-Zhang team had fallen in the quarterfinals after dominating 72 holes of stroke play in the NCAA Championship a year ago at the Grayhawk Golf Club’s Raptor Course in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   The answer came Wednesday at Grayhawk when Zhang, a freshman from Irvine, Calif., finished off a stubborn Sofie Kebsgaard Nielsen, a junior at Oregon from Denmark, 3 and 1, to give Stanford a 3-2 victory over the Ducks in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match.

   Turned out, Stanford just might be even better at match play than it was in the more traditional stroke-play format.

   Stanford had won its first NCAA crown in 2015, the first year that the match-play layer was added to the NCAA Championship. Players and coaches were wary of this new format. They knew that match play was quirky, maybe even, dare we say, unfair. Like they were playing some kind of fair game to begin with.

   Nobody knew it better than Anne Walker, the Margot and Mitch Milias director of women’s golf at Stanford. She watched some really talented Cardinal teams during the Andrea Lee-Albane Valenzuela era come up excruciatingly short a couple of different times in match play in the NCAA Championship.

   But maybe because match play challenges you mentally as much, if not more, than it does physically, maybe, just maybe, this Stanford team was better equipped to handle match play than some of its predecessors.

   Brooke Seay, a junior from San Diego and No. 42 in the Women’s WAGR, and Aline Krauter, a senior from Germany and No. 26 in the Women’s WAGR, jumped on their Oregon opponents early and never took their feet off the gas as they put two Stanford points on the board early Wednesday while each completing a 3-0 run through the match-play bracket at Grayhawk.

   As I mentioned in my post following Tuesday’s quarterfinal-semifinal day at Grayhawk, Seay literally cut her teeth in the match-play bracket at the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship year after year. Krauter navigated the match-play bracket to capture The Women’s Amateur Championship during the coronavirus pandemic-plagued summer of 2020.

   Both reached the round of 16 in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y.

   In Wednesday’s Final Match, Seay took out Oregon’s Ching-Tzu Chen, a junior from Taiwan, with a 4 and 3 decision. Krauter claimed a 5 and 3 victory over Hsin-Yu (Cynthia) Lu, a sophomore from Taiwan and No. 27 in the Women’s WAGR.

   Lu was the impressive winner of the Pac-12’s individual title last month on the Ducks’ home course at Eugene Country Club

   Sadie Englemann, a sophomore from Austin, Texas, and Heck, a sophomore from Memphis, Tenn. and No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR, also had early leads in their matches Wednesday, but, to the surprise of nobody who watched Oregon join the elite of women’s college golf this spring, the Ducks battled back.

   Briana Chacon, a junior from Whittier, Calif. and No. 67 in the Women’s WAGR, turned things around to deliver a point for Oregon with a 1-up victory over Englemann.

   Tze-Han (Heather) Lin, Oregon’s senior leader from Taiwan and No. 98 in the Women’s WAGR, rallied to earn another point for the Ducks with a 3 and 2 victory over Heck.

   Caught the part of The Golf Channel’s broadcast when it was mentioned that Heck has been battling mononucleosis ever since the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in early April, which explains some of her absences from the lineup this spring.

   But you only need to watch Heck interact with her teammates for a few minutes to see what a leadership role she has for Stanford. And her 2-up victory over Georgia’s Jenny Bae in the quarterfinals, when some of her teammates were struggling a little against the determined Bulldogs, was as big a match win as any achieved by a Stanford player in three rounds of matches.

   So, it was left to Zhang in the Final Match to bring the national championship home.

   You want to talk about match-play experience, Zhang’s got plenty of it. She ran the table to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2020 at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md. and again to claim the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship last summer at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Md.

   Zhang and Heck were part of a United States victory over Great Britain and Ireland in last summer’s Curtis Cup Match at the Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales. Not sure if anything builds match-play scar tissue better than playing in a match on foreign soil when it feels like a whole country is rooting against you.

   And Zhang got the job done. Kabsgaard Nielsen battled back from a big early deficit because that’s what Oregon players have been doing all spring on their way to making the Ducks the legitimate No. 2 team in the country.

   But Zhang had the answers, particularly when she spun her approach off the slope on the par-4 15^th hole to five feet and converted the birdie putt to turn a narrow 1-up advantage into a 2-up lead with three holes to play.

   Stanford had its hands full in both of its matches Tuesday against Southeastern Conference foes Georgia and Auburn. Getting challenged and surviving might have made the Cardinal even tougher in the Final Match.

   For Walker, though, it was just a matter of character, something, she felt, is why this Stanford team was the last one standing Wednesday at Grayhawk.

   “It takes really special people to (win with expectations), to be able to shut that noise out and be able to come out here and perform and allow yourself to swing free the way they did today,” Walker told the Stanford website. “It speaks to the caliber of player they are, and it also speaks to the type of person they are.

   “And we saw that with Rose being the individual, when you’re fighting for an individual title, it’s much harder. But when you’re fighting for a team title, you’re just powered by something so huge and so deep, that, for some reason, you’re able to put that aside.”

   If you’re in the Philadelphia area, you’ll get a chance to watch Zhang and Heck wearing the Red, White & Blue and competing for the United States in a couple of weeks in the 42^nd Curtis Cup Match at one of America’s truly great golf courses, the historic East Course at Merion in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township.

   And if Heck isn’t sufficiently recovered from her bout with mono, U.S. captain Sarah Ingram has a pretty good alternate in Brooke Seay.

   Oh yeah, another member of the U.S. team at Merion is Megha Ganne, the teen standout from Holmdel, N.J. Ganne will start her college career later this summer at … wait for it … Stanford, so yeah, look out for the Cardinal again, same time next spring.