The North Carolina men’s team and Stanford women’s team came away victorious on Wednesday in the second annual Jackson T. Stephens Cup at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida.
The event, which honors the late Augusta National chairman, began last October at The Alotian Club in Roland, Arkansas, before making its way to Seminole this fall. Only seven of the best men’s and women’s teams are invited to the exclusive tournament. After 54 holes of stroke play, the top two teams in each division face off in a match-play championship.
Early headlines in the tournament went to North Carolina’s David Ford, the lefty freshman who is the identical twin of Georgia’s Maxwell Ford. Ford took advantage of unusually calm conditions to shoot a stunning 10-under 62 in the second round that included eight consecutive birdies, at Nos. 9-16. As good as it was, the round realistically could have been even better given that Ford missed four consecutive putts of roughly 12 feet during the front nine. He also failed to convert a 10-foot birdie try on the closing hole.
Alas, Ford would have to settle for a sublime 62, two strokes shy of the Seminole course record of 60 set by Claude Harmon in 1947. Ford would finish at 16-under 200, winning the individual title by four strokes over Oklahoma State’s Jonas Baumgartner. The final round tested Ford’s patience of managing a massive lead.
“I learned a lot from this round, probably more than in this round than any other round I’ve ever played,” Ford told Golf Channel after his win. “I just learned so much about having a big lead. The biggest thing I learned is that you can’t get too far ahead of yourself. I kind of wanted to pick up the trophy on 16 green, and I four-putted that hole.”
Ford’s outstanding play led the Tar Heels to a resounding 20-shot victory in the stroke-play portion, but they would have a much more difficult time in the match-play championship against Florida State. The Seminoles led in four of the five matches on the back nine, but North Carolina rallied to win two of those in a 3-2 victory. Of particular note, Dylan Menante made a late surge to flip his match against Frederik Kjettrup, and Austin Greaser did the same against Patrick McCann.
North Carolina is challenging to be a top-5 team, and many pundits think they are the favorites to win next year’s NCAA Championship.
“I can look down the range and see the fourth-best amateur and the seventh-ranked amateur in the world who are wearing Carolina blue just like me,” Ford said of the squad’s depth. “I think I’m the third-best guy on the team, and I have a lot of motivation to beat those guys, and they push me really well.”
In the women’s division, Wake Forest’s Rachel Kuehn shot 10-under 206 for a two-stroke victory over Carla Tejedo of LSU. Kuehn played on the American Curtis Cup and Palmer Cup teams before a strong summer that had her 10th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking entering the Stephens Cup.
“It’s been such a surreal past couple of days,” Kuehn told Golf Channel. “The golf course, we were all a little nervous and not sure what to expect when we got down here. We got really lucky with the conditions because there wasn’t quite as much wind as we thought there would be, so it was a little more scorable.”
Kuehn led Wake to the 54-hole stroke-play title, which set up a major clash between the Demon Deacons and Stanford. Golfstat had the two teams ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the country, respectively, heading into last week.
Though all five matches were close, the defending national champion Cardinal stayed a step ahead of Wake throughout much of the afternoon to win, 4-1. World No. 1 Rose Zhang beat Emilia Migliaccio, 3 and 2, and world No. 3 Rachel Heck disposed of Carolina Lopez-Chacarra, 3 and 1. Kuehn lost to Megha Ganne, 1 down, after making a bogey on the par-3 17th.
There was a consolation match in each division for the third- and fourth-best teams during stroke play. On the men’s side, Stanford defeated Texas, 3-2. For the women, Duke defeated South Carolina, 3-2.
Next year’s Stephens Cup will be played at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, Texas.
MEN’S RESULTS / WOMEN’S RESULTS
Sean Fairholm