Northwestern
Illinois
NU Advances to Title Match With Tiebreak Win Over No. 1 Seed Illinois
2/12/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Feb. 12, 2011
Big Ten Match Play Championship Results and Live Scoring
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- In an incredibly exciting semifinal showdown at the Big Ten Match Play Championship Saturday morning at PGA National, No. 4 seed Northwestern and No. 1 seed Illinois each won a trio of matches, but it was the Wildcats moving on to their second-consecutive final via a total holes won tiebreaker.
Josh Dupont (Poway, Calif./Cathedral Catholic) and Brad Shigezawa (Honolulu, Hawaii/Punahou Academy) both won their matches for NU, but it was junior Eric Chun's (Ansung City, South Korea/International Christian School) massive 5 and 3 victory at the No. 2 spot that helped push the Wildcats over the top in the total holes won tiebreak.
Illinois had a chance to even the tiebreaker tally late in the final match, but an Illinois three-putt bogey on No. 17 in a match pitting defending NCAA champion Scott Langley and defending Big Ten champion David Lipsky (La Canada, Calif./La Canada) tipped the scale permanently in NU's favor.
Defending Big Ten Match Play champion Northwestern now advances to face No. 7 seed Indiana in Saturday afternoon's championship match. Indiana -- the 2009 winner of this tournament -- defeated No. 3 seed Ohio State Saturday morning to advance.
Blow-by-blow recaps of all six matches are as follows:
No. 6: Clayton Parkhill (ILL) def. Jack Perry (NU), 3 and 1
The Big Ten Match Play's highly anticipated showdown between Northwestern and Illinois began in cold and rainy weather when NU freshman Jack Perry (Santa Barbara, Calif./Santa Barbara) striped his drive on No. 1 en route to taking the first hole of the match from Clayton Parkhill. In a match as erratic as the conditions, no hole was halved until the seventh, at which point Perry was on top, 2-up, following wins on Nos. 5 and 6. Head coach Pat Goss described it as "flashes of brilliance and flashes of not so brilliance" in the early going.
After no halves on the first six holes, the next four were split before Perry found trouble on the greens. He three-putted three times on the back nine, making bogeys at Nos. 11 and 12 to bring Parkhill back to all square. Parkhill continued to charge, moving to 2-up with three to play after making a birdie on No. 15. Perry extended things with a par at No. 16, but a Parkhill birdie on the next hole ended the match, 3 and 1.
No. 5: Josh Dupont (NU) def. Mason Jacobs (ILL), 3 and 2
Dupont and Illinois' Mason Jacobs halved the first five holes of their match Saturday morning until Jacobs found a hazard on No. 6 and Dupont took advantage to move to 1-up. He continued to grind out pars -- making nine-straight at one juncture of the match -- which made it hard for Jacobs to gain ground in the coldness and wetness of Florida.
Dupont went up two holes after a win at No. 8, then doubled that lead to 4-up through 13 with a birdie on No. 12 and a winning par on No. 13. Jacobs got one hole back with a win at No. 14, but Dupont made par on the next two holes to close out his win, 3 and 2, after a fist-pump-inducing 12-footer on No. 16 to clinch.
No. 4: Thomas Pieters (ILL) def. Nick Losole (NU), 3 and 2
Thomas Pieters went 2-up through two holes in this one before sophomore Nick Losole (Scottsdale, Ariz./Scottsdale Notre Dame) struck a "classy" pitch on the par-5 third to birdie it for the second-straight day and get back to 1-down. Pieters pushed to 2-up again on No. 7, but Losole got red hot with birdies at Nos. 8, 9 and 10 to claim wins on two of those holes and bring the match back to all square.
Losole then made double bogey at No. 11 and another bogey at No. 13 to fall to 2-down before two more bogeys on the first two holes of the famed "Bear Trap" stretch led to a 3 and 2 win for Pieters.
No. 3: Brad Shigezawa (NU) def. Chris DeForest (ILL), 1-Up
Shigezawa won the first hole of his match against Chris DeForest when the Illinois senior made bogey on the first hole. DeForest birdied No. 3 to bring the match back to all-square, but Shigezawa made birdie on No. 8 and won No. 9 to get to 2-up at the turn.
DeForest's second par-5 birdie of the day came on No. 10 and cut Shigezawa's lead in half, but the NU freshman battled right back to birdie No. 14 and push his lead back to 2-up. Both players made par on the two Bear Trap par-3s (Nos. 15 and 17), but a Shigezawa bogey on No. 16 gave him a slim 1-up margin entering the par-5 18th.
With only two matches remaining on the course and the entire team result riding on this pairing, Shigezawa hit a perfect tee shot on No. 18. On the green, Shigezawa drained a five-footer for par to clinch a 1-up victory -- at the time giving NU a 3-2 lead in the match and ensuring at worst that the match would head to the tiebreaker.
No. 2: Eric Chun (NU) def. Luke Guthrie (ILL), 5 and 3
Chun jumped all over Luke Guthrie from the start of Saturday morning's match, winning a pair of holes after Guthrie bogeys and then with birdies on Nos. 4 and 8 to hold a commanding 4-up lead at the turn.
With the entire team match heading to a total holes won tiebreaker, Chun's 4-up advantage was huge as the junior went dormie on No. 15. Chun hit the green on the difficult par-3 15th while Guthrie put his tee shot in a bunker, and Chun went on to win the hole and his match by a huge 5 and 3 margin.
Chun improves his Big Ten Match Play career record to 9-0-1 over the past three years, and this win was as big as any of them.
No. 1: Scott Langley (ILL) def. David Lipsky (NU), 1-Up
Unfortunately for Northwestern, the No. 1 match started out as the complete opposite of No. 2. While Scott Langley played basically even-par golf over the first half of the match, Lipsky carded four bogeys and lost all four of those holes to find himself 4-down through six holes of play.
After his bogey at No. 6, Lipsky made par on the next nine-straight holes, and Langley began to falter a bit. Back-to-back bogeys at Nos. 11 and 12 cut Lipsky's deficit in half, then a poor chip on the 14th by the defending NCAA individual champion Langley gave the defending Big Ten champion Lipsky another hole to shave the Wildcat's deficit to one with four holes to play.
Now the lone match still on the course and with Northwestern up 3-2, Langley went dormie at No. 17 after winning the 16th. If Langley had won No. 17 for a three-hole victory, it would have evened the score in the tiebreaker. Instead, he three-putted and Lipsky won the hole to ensure Northwestern would move on to the championship match.
Both players made birdie on the par-5 18th to give Langley the 1-up victory in an exciting match between two of the Big Ten's best.
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