No. 11 Texas Men’s Golf took home second place at the Cypress Point Invitational, losing on a 10-5 individual hole tiebreaker against No. 4 Arizona State in the championship round.
Hosted by Stanford and held on Monday and Tuesday, the tournament saw a format consisting of three rounds across two days, with the first two rounds happening on day one. The day-one matchups were random seeding, and the final matchup on day two was seeded by overall record.
The Cypress Point Golf Course is famous for its unconventional layout. Located in Pebble Beach, California, the course features back-to-back par fives and back-to-back par threes. Fairways of different holes come together, cliffs run down throughout the course and cypress trees occupy many fairways.
The course is best known for the famous par three 16th hole where golfers are faced with the unique challenge of hitting 230 yards over the Pacific Ocean onto an island green. The course plays as a par-72 featuring a total of 6,610 yards.
In an impressive field consisting of eight schools, four being top six schools in the country (No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Arizona State, No. 5 Georgia Tech and No. 6 Tennessee), the Longhorns went 2-0 on day one and found themselves back in another championship match. Sophomores Christiaan Maas, Tommy Morrison, Jacob Sosa and Keaton Vo as well as graduate students Nathan Petronzio and Brian Stark represented the Longhorns at Cypress Point.
In the first round, No. 11 Texas matched up against No. 5 Georgia Tech. The opening round saw a foursome format, meaning that “you and a partner compete side by side playing one ball in alternating order on each hole,” according to rule 22 in the Rules of Golf.
Sosa and Morrison won their match by four holes, winning their first hole and never losing their lead. Petronzio and Vo followed swiftly, winning their matchup by four holes as well. They managed to win the first three holes and never looked back, elevating Texas to a win over the Yellow Jackets. Maas and Stark lost their matchup, but the 2-1 record gave the Longhorns their first of two wins at the tournament.
The second round, which followed later in the afternoon, featured four ball golf. This is a format “where you and your partner compete together as a side, with each of you playing your own ball, and your side’s score for a hole is the lower score of the two of you on that hole,” according to rule 23 in the Rules of Golf.
Texas faced unranked Pepperdine, going 2-1 where Sosa and Morrison and Petronzio and Vo won their matchups again while Maas and Stark lost once more. The 2-1 victory elevated the Longhorns to the championship round, featuring a 2022 NCAA Championship rematch between No. 4 Arizona State and No. 11 Texas.
The final round consisted of six singles matches where the Longhorns started off slow. Morrison, Sosa and Vo all teed off first and lost their matchups early, losing by 10 holes altogether and going down against the Sun Devils 3-0.
Trying to climb a mountain, Maas, Stark and Petronzio all won their matchups and tied the overall singles record 3-3. But the mountain was too high as they only combined for a five-hole lead over their opponents and lost the tiebreaker 10-5. The Longhorns fell short of winning back-to-back tournaments after taking first at the Big 12 Match Play Tournament on Oct. 9-11, finishing second overall at the Cypress Point Invitational.
Texas will take a four-month hiatus before returning to the season at the Amer Ari Invitational, which is hosted by the University of Hawaii, on Feb. 8-10.
