March 20, 2012
Pacific Palisades, Calif. – Freshman Anders Albertson fired a 1-over-par 72 to lead 10th-ranked Georgia Tech past No. 4 UCLA Sunday, 295-305, in a dual match Sunday at Riviera Country Club to kick off the Yellow Jackets’ spring break on the West Coast.
Richard Werenski added a 73, while Ollie Schniederjans and Bo Andrews shot 75s, Seth Reeves 77 and James White an 81 in a match where the low four scores counted for each team. Riviera, on which the Jackets also played a practice round Monday, is the site of the NCAA Championship later this spring and is the annual stop for the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust Open.
“The trip to Los Angeles was pretty successful,” said head coach Bruce Heppler. “There’s a lot to learn about Riviera around the greens. We feel like we got to know it and played a lot better during our practice round the second day. We’ve gotten a lot of work done. If we can get back here, those two days will have helped us quite a bit.
“The idea of coming out here was to give us a chance to play on some courses and get used to the different grasses and conditions. The Barona Cup is a six-man tournament, which gives these six guys who have done most of our playing a good chance to compete against one another, so it’s a big event for them. ”
A low-five-out-of-six format will be used this Thursday and Friday at the 54-hole Barona Collegiate Cup, which will take place at the Barona Creek Golf Club (7,088 yards, par 72) in Lakeside, Calif. The 16-team event, 36 holes Thursday and 18 holes Friday, is hosted by 12th-ranked San Diego State and includes No. 11 Southern California, Arizona, Central Connecticut State, Hawaii, Illinois, Loyola Marymount, North Texas, Northwestern, Pacific, Pepperdine, Utah and TCU.
White, a senior from Acworth, Ga., is working on a streak of four consecutive top-10 finishes and has not finished out of the top 20 in any of his seven events this year, leading the Yellow Jackets with a 70.7 stroke average. Andrews has four top-10 finishes this year and a 72.1 stroke average, while Albertson has posted three top-10s and a 71.4 norm. The other three players range from 72.1 to 73.1 in stroke average and have combined for four top-10 finishes.
