Men's Golf Defeats No. 4 USC At Del Walker Match Play Championship
Feb. 27, 2012
Del Walker Match Play Championship Live Scoring
LONG BEACH, Calif. - The Oregon State men's golf team defeated fourth-ranked USC in a morning match that came down to a tiebreaker but lost to No. 5 UCLA in the afternoon round at the Del Walker Match Play Championship on Monday.
The Del Walker Intercollegiate changed its format this year to a match play competition that includes eight teams and is being played at the par-70, 6,633-yard Virginia Country Club. The Beavers will face No. 9 California, which defeated Oregon in the morning and lost to Washington in the afternoon, on Tuesday for third place.
Oregon State defeated USC, which is ranked fourth nationally by Golfweek and sixth by golfstat.com, in a match that was determined by a tiebreaker when both teams finished with 2 ½ points. Senior Alex Moore was the Beavers' No. 1 seed and his match against Jeffrey Kang was halved so it went to the No. 2-seeded golfers and junior Nick Sherwood knocked off Steve Lim 2 up to give Oregon State the victory.
Senior Jonnie Motomochi defeated Sam Smith 2 up for the Beavers other point against USC, while junior Nick Chianello lost 2 and 1 to Ramsey Sahyoun and senior Casey King fell 4 and 3 to Anthony Paolucci.
"The guys did a great job at the end of the morning round when they needed to so we could get the tie and win the tiebreaker," Oregon State head coach Jon Reehoorn said. "Jonnie got off to a great start and handled a little adversity to get the win. Nick did the same and played solid all day and the holes he lost he just gave away. Both of those guys did a great job."
UCLA beat Long Beach State 3-2 in the opening round with wins by Patrick Cantlay (8 and 7 over Kevin Lim), Alex Kim (3 and 1 over Raymond Ho) and Pontus Widegren (4 and 3 over Philip Chian).
The fifth-ranked Bruins won four of the five matches against Oregon State in the afternoon round as Moore battled Cantlay, who is ranked 19th nationally by Golfweek, to earn a half. In other matches, Sherwood lost 5 and 4 to Pedro Figueiredo, Chianello dropped a 2 and 1 match to Kim, Anton Arboleda defeated King 1 up and Widegren beat Motomochi 2 up.
"It started raining in the afternoon and the wind was blowing hard and we just got off to a bad start," Reehoorn said. "UCLA is a great team. We know we aren't that far off to beat a team like UCLA. We can take nothing but positives from today. I'm pretty happy."
The match between Oregon State and California will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday and live scoring is available at golfstat.com. UCLA will face Washington in the championship match.
"We have an opportunity tomorrow to play another top-10 team in the country and go home with a win to give our guys some confidence going into the stroke play tournaments," Reehoorn said."
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