Georgia Tech Golf Upsets No. 1 Illinois, Advances To NCAA Semifinals To Face Florida State

Georgia Tech will face Florida State tomorrow in the semifinals

Georgia Tech Athletics

What a week it has been for Georgia Tech Golf.

On Monday, Hiroshi Tai won the NCAA Golf Championship and today, the Yellow Jackets advanced to the NCAA Semifinals after upsetting No. 1 Illinois today. Georgia Tech has now set up a semifinal matchup with Florida State tomorrow. Georgia Tech got match victories from Bartley Forrester, Aidan Tran, and Hiroshi Tai on Tuesday morning to advance.

he Fighting Illini, who won the team stroke-play title by 16 shots over 72 holes, remained hot in the early going of Tuesday’s contest, leading four of the five matches early and three of them at the turn. But Tech began to chip away.

Forrester delivered the Yellow Jackets’ first point, a 3&1 victory over Tyler Goecke in the lead match after falling behind two holes early. He rallied to take a 1-hole lead with a birdie at the par-3 8th, and the match went back and forth until the Tech senior from Gainesville, Ga., won three straight holes with pars at 15, 16 and 17. He is now 4-0 in NCAA match play.

Tran, who replaced All-American Christo Lamprecht in the Tech lineup for the last 54 holes of stroke play, delivered for the Yellow Jackets Tuesday with a 3&2 victory over Piercen Hunt. The sophomore from Fresno, Calif., never trailed in the penultimate match, taking the lead for good with a birdie at the 8th hole. He built his lead to three holes and closed out Hunt with a par and a half at the 16th hole.

It was left for NCAA individual champion Tai, to clinch the contest for Tech in the anchor match. The sophomore from Singapore battled back to knot the match with a birdie at the 10th. He won 12, 13 and 14, all par 4s, in succession to lead by three, then closed out the match at 16 when his tee shot hit the flag and settle less than three feet from the cup.

“I’m proud of our guys,” said head coach Bruce Heppler. “We played the back nine (well). We have played the front really well and (Illinois) made some birdies to put us behind. But we played the back better, especially the 12th hole (a par 3). We won three or four holes there and got us back into it. We hit some great shots coming in. Hiroshi’s iron play has been phenomenal, and Aidan Tran played great.”

In the other two matches, freshman Carson Kim (Yorba Linda, Calif.) fell to Max Herendeen, 5&4. Freshman Kale Fontenot (Lafayette, La.) nearly erased a four-hole deficit, rallying to within a single hole playing 18, but the match went unfinished after Tai scored the clinching point.

On the other side of the bracket, 6th-seeded Auburn defeated No. 3 seed Virginia, 3-1, to advance to the semifinals against No. 7 Ohio State, who upset No. 2 Vanderbilt, 3-1. All four lower seeds won on Tuesday morning for the first time ever in the NCAA Championship.

NOTES – Tech is now 4-5 all-time in six NCAA match play appearances, having advanced past the quarterfinals in three of the six … Bartley Forrester improved to 4-0 personally, having won all three of his matches in the 2023 NCAA Championship … Hiroshi Tai evened his career match play record at 2-2 … Tech lost to Florida State, 3-0, in the ACC Championship semifinals in April, and are 1-1 all-time against the Seminoles in post-season match play.

(All stats and info courtesy of Georgia Tech Athletics)