CARLSBAD, Calif. — Georgia Tech sophomore Hiroshi Tai survived a triple bogey on his seventeenth gap with a closing par for a 1-under 71, and it was simply sufficient to win the NCAA males’s golf title Monday at La Costa.
It additionally helped the Yellow Jackets narrowly be part of the eight groups that advance to match play to compete for the staff title.
Tai turned the fourth participant from Georgia Tech to win the NCAA particular person title, and first since Troy Matteson in 2002. The victory earns him a visit to this yr’s U.S. Open and subsequent yr’s Masters.
Tai, who spent two years within the Singapore Navy earlier than enrolling at Georgia Tech, completed at 3-under 285 for a one-shot victory over 5 gamers.
Gordon Sargent of Vanderbilt, the NCAA champion two years in the past, and Ben James of Virginia had been the final two gamers who had an opportunity to drive a playoff, needing birdie on the par-5 18th.
Each selected to hit 3-wood to you should definitely keep wanting water on the left, although neither had an opportunity to achieve the inexperienced. Sargent was in deep tough and lucky to get a free drop as a result of his toes had been on the cart path.
James missed his 15-foot birdie try and shot 73. Sargent hit wedge that spun off the slope to six toes. His birdie caught the left fringe of the cup and spun away. He closed with a 72.
Tai had completed his spherical practically two hours earlier. He had led by as many as 4 photographs earlier within the day, after which practically threw it away on the par-3 eighth, his penultimate gap. From a nasty lie in a bunker, he despatched that effectively over the inexperienced and wound up with a triple bogey.
“I nonetheless had yet another (gap) to play and every thing to play for the staff,” Tai stated.
He frolicked within the clubhouse checking to see Tech’s probabilities of getting the eighth spot, after which headed to the vary to organize for a playoff that by no means occurred.
Tyler Goecke of Illinois, Luke Clanton of Florida State and Jackson Koivun of Auburn, who gained the Ben Hogan Award because the nation’s greatest faculty golfer, every shot 71 to tie for second.
Koivun, ending on the par-4 ninth, hit an strategy that seemed as if it will be about 10 toes behind the outlet for a birdie probability. However it hit the highest of the flagstick and caromed again right into a entrance bunker. He blasted out to a foot and tapped in for par.
The opposite Georgia Tech particular person champions had been Matteson, Charlie Yates (1934) and Watts Gunn (1927).
