The No. 11 Texas Tech men’s golf team dropped to sixth place following a tough third round on a 36-hole day two at the Big 12 Championship at Prairie Dunes.
Tech will head into Wednesday’s final round at 47-over par, 17 shots back of the leaders, No. 18 Texas and No. 2 Oklahoma State.
“We just didn’t quite execute on the short, 6-foot putts when we needed to,” Tech head coach Greg Sands said. “We didn’t make enough putts to have the kind of score we needed today. The deficit is doable on a course like this, especially with the wind and rain we could face tomorrow, but everyone has to play well.”
The Red Raiders struggled out of the chute to begin round two, going 10-over par on holes 10-15 to start the day, and found themselves in a double-digit deficit to the leaders. However, birdies on 16 & 17 from Ivan Ramirez, coupled with a Federico Zucchetti birdie on 18, Hurly Long birdies on 17 and 1 and Hannes Ronneblad birdies on 1 & 3 had Tech back in the mix.
Following that stretch, the Red Raiders went 2-under on holes 5-7, punctuated by a Fredrik Nilehn birdie that brought Tech within two shots of the leader at the time, Oklahoma State.
However, holes 8 & 9, part of the stretch of holes which doomed the Red Raiders all day, yielded a score of 3-over to push Tech to a round two total of 287, and nine shots back for the tournament.
Following a one-hour break, the Red Raiders returned to the course for round three. Tech rebounded from a 9-over performance on holes 1-4 with seven birdies on holes 5-7, but promptly went 9-over on holes 8-9 to end the first half of round three. After that, Tech slid further down the leaderboard by going 9-over on holes 10-12 to begin the back nine. Between rounds two and three, Tech went 25-over par on holes 8-12.
“We didn’t get the start we needed to on the second 18,” Sands said. “We were playing a bunch of wedges into the first green where there was an easy pin with a backstop, but we walked away from that hole two or three-over. I like how we really battled back toward the end of the round to make it respectable, though. A lot can happen in 18 holes, especially on this course, but the guys are just going to have to cut loose and have fun, knowing they have to play well. That can be a good thing.”
The Red Raiders finished the third round on a high note, as both Ronneblad & Nilehn birdied 16 & 17, while Zucchetti and Ramirez birdied 17 as well, bringing Tech (+47) into a jumble with Oklahoma (+41), Baylor (+46) and Kansas (+44), all within six shots of each other for third place.
Individually, despite struggling to close the third round, Ramirez (+9) is in seventh place, just four shots off the lead. The top 10 individual finishers will be named to the All-Big 12 Championship Team.
The Red Raiders will be joined by Baylor in tomorrow’s pairing, and play will begin at 8 a.m.
Fans can keep up with live scoring on Golfstat, and can follow @TTUMensGolf on Twitter and like Texas Tech Men’s Golf on Facebook for live, on-site updates from Hutchinson.
(Courtesy: Texas Tech Athletics Communications Office)
