CARLSBAD, Calif. – How confident was LSU that it could mount the biggest third-round comeback in NCAA Championship history? Head coach Jake Amos had already booked the Tigers flights home for Sunday night.
Through 36 holes at La Costa, LSU sat T-27 out of 30 teams. At one point during Saturday’s second round, the electronic scoreboard showed the seventh-ranked Tigers in 31st place. They were 20 over and 17 shots outside of the top 15 entering Sunday, after which the field would be cut in half.
“We had nothing to lose,” said Amos, who didn’t even debrief with his team on Saturday night, instead taking them to In-N-Out and not talking about the sloppy golf they’d displayed the first two rounds.
On Sunday morning, the Tigers played Mario Kart and ping-pong, and it wasn’t until shortly before lunch that Amos presented the gameplan: be super aggressive on No. 10 and 11, survived through Nos. 12-14, then push the pedal down the rest of the back nine, try to turn a few under par and don’t let up from there.
If nothing else, LSU could gain some momentum for next season.
“Tigers don’t quit,” Amos said. “That’s the saying, and we didn’t. We were just trying to shoot the best we could, trying to be aggressive, and they executed to perfection. … We thought 15 under would be enough. I didn’t even think 18 under was possible.”
The Tigers’ 18-under 270 was the lowest round of the day by nine shots and the third-lowest 18-hole score in relation to par in NCAA Championship history, one shy of the record shared by UNLV (1998) and Arizona (2000). Until Sunday, no team had made up 17 or more shots on the top 15 and made the 54-hole cut; LSU did even better, rising to T-12 with three other teams – San Diego, Tennessee and Stanford – all of which are just three strokes back of eighth-place Duke.
Auburn leads at 22 under, followed by Texas (-19), Vanderbilt (-9), UCLA (-8), Arizona (-8), Oklahoma State (-8) and North Carolina (-6). Second-ranked Florida also rallied in the afternoon, climbing to T-10 with Virginia at 1 over, a shot back of Oklahoma in ninth.
Freshman Dan Hayes not only led LSU with an 8-under 64, but his score also set the tournament record at La Costa and broke 2011 NCAA individual champion John Peterson’s program record. Jay Mendell, Matthew Dodd-Berry and reigning first-team All-American Arni Sveinsson all shot at least 3 under, with Sveinsson’s 69 moving him to 4 over after a rocky start to his championship.
Hayes carded nine birdies, six on his front and final side, though his best hole came at the part-5 18th hole, where he got up and down from 170 yards for par after hitting his second shot into the water.
“Outrageous,” Amos said of Hayes’ round.
Another SEC coach had an even better assessment of LSU’s performance: “That was f—king unbelievable!”
“Now, it’s hard to back up a really good round with another really good round,” Amos added. “We see that in golf all the time. But I think we have the perfect gameplans and attitudes.”
Hard to argue after Sunday. And yes, Amos had to cancel those plane tickets.