Texas A&M Men’s Golf came painstakingly close to extending their season this weekend at the NCAA Sammamish Regional. The Aggies finished in sixth place at 15-over par, just one spot outside of qualifying for the NCAA Championship. Southern California won the tournament at 3-under par.
“It’s heartbreaking,” head coach J.T. Higgins said to 12thman.com. “This is a couple years in a row now that we’ve been so close. It really wasn’t anything we did today, it was the first two rounds where we didn’t finish strong or play the par-5s well. We did better today but the damage was already done and it was a case of too little, too late. I feel bad for the guys, they played their hearts out today.”
There was a diamond in the rough, as sophomore Chandler Phillips managed a seventh place finish with a final score of 2-under par. His strong showing qualifies him for the NCAA Championships held in Sugar Grove, Illinois on May 26-31. This was Phillips’ ninth top-10 finish of the season.
“I’m excited for Chandler,” Higgins continued to 12thman.com. “He’s had such a fantastic year, one of the best seasons in program history. We’ve had a couple guys who have won more during a season but he’s put up consistently strong finishes week after week after week. He was a stud today, shooting a 67 on the final round of regionals and earning a spot at the national championship.”
Phillips’ score of 4-under par in the final round was tied for best of the day and allowed him to jump nine spots on the leaderboard to snag the final qualifying spot for the NCAA Championship.
Andrew Paysse also had a strong performance this week, finishing in a tie for 13th at 1-over par. The junior went low early, carding a score of 2-under par on the first day of competition, and followed with two rounds in the low 70s to coast to a top-15 finish. Paysse was tied for sixth in par 3 scoring for week and finished inside the top-10 in birdies, holing 11 over his three rounds.
Junior Cameron Champ played steadily throughout the tournament and finished in a tie for 22nd at 5-over par. Rounding out the team for Texas A&M were true freshman Dan Erickson and redshirt freshman Brandon Smith who each ended the tournament in ties for 51st and 56th, respectively.
“We went through a lot of adversity this year,” Higgins added to his comments to 12thman.com. “We lost a player at semester, brought in Dan and had three guys in a car wreck so it just seemed like all season we were always able to overcome. That’s probably the most disappointing thing, I thought we were going to be able to do it again, but we just came up a little short. We’ve got two great recruits coming in and we’re not losing anybody out of our lineup so we’re going to bring back a lot of experience and add a couple new guys who can really compete. The future is bright but that doesn’t make us feel any better about how things ended today.”
