Arkansas ousts Georgia in semis
Associated Press
Saturday, May 30, 2009

TOLEDO, Ohio — David Lingmerth aced the third hole and won his match against Georgia's Hudson Swafford in the semifinals Friday, helping fourth-seeded Arkansas advance to the NCAA Division I men's team championship against Texas A&M.

While the Razorbacks beat eighth-seeded giant-killer Georgia 3-1-1, seventh-seeded Texas A&M edged sixth-seeded Michigan 3-1-1 in a dramatic finish in the other semifinal. The Razorbacks and Aggies are both seeking their first golf title. The five members of each team will play a scheduled 18 holes of match play today.

Matt Van Zandt clinched the decisive point for Texas A&M with a conceded birdie after chopping a wedge out of the high rough from 96 yards to 15 feet from the pin.

Georgia beat top-seeded Oklahoma State 3-2 with a late surge earlier in the day's first quarterfinal.

Georgia had finished 20 strokes behind the Cowboys in three rounds of medal play, finishing tied for seventh place.

The match came down to the No. 1 players for each team, with Georgia's Brian Harman defeating Rickie Fowler 1-up by overcoming a 1-down deficit over the last two holes. Harman birdied the final three holes, rolling in a 4½-foot putt on the 18th green to take the point.

Arkansas' Lingmerth, a junior from Sweden, holed a 7-iron from 202 yards to build a 2-up lead. He ended up with a 3-and-2 victory over Georgia's Swafford.

This is the first year the tournament format has been 54 holes of medal play to determine the individual medalist and the seeding for the top eight teams, followed by two days of match play to determine the team champion.

Arkansas had won two matches, Michigan had won one and a fourth was all square as Van Zandt carried a 1-up lead to the 17th green. After Van Zandt, whose score had not been counted in each of the three medal-play rounds, barely missed a 12-foot birdie putt, Michigan's Bill Rankin calmly rolled in a 10-footer for birdie to square the match while a few hundred fans - most of them Michigan supporters - cheered.

Both hit driver on the par-4 18th, with Rankin's ball coming to rest a couple of feet above a deep fairway bunker set in the side of a hill. He had an awkward stance, and the ball was settled down in the deep rough at Inverness Club.

Hitting first, he punched the ball out but it hit on the back of the green and took one bounce into a bunker.

Van Zandt was 20 yards in front of him, with a better lie but still in the deep rough. He popped out a wedge that landed in the middle of the green and ended up below the hole, which was located on a shelf on the back right portion of the green.

Rankin blasted out of the bunker but his shot rolled off the severe side of the green and into deep rough. From there, he took another mighty swing, the ball running several feet past.

Rankin then conceded Van Zandt's putt, giving the Razorbacks the third point they needed to advance.

From the Saturday, May 30, 2009 edition of the Augusta Chronicle
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