If Ohio State's season ended last month, it's really sour. The Buckeyes finished fifth in the Big 10 Championships in the year of reconstruction and missed the NCAA title bid.
But the three weeks after a year ended, with head coach Jay Moseley and his team going back to the heart of the country with the playoff trophy, something Moseley never did. Ohio State University scored seven shots in the third National Golf Invitational at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona on Sunday.
Ohio State held the NCAA semifinal a year ago, but these are four outstanding seniors. After failing to score in the NCAA regional bid earlier this month, Moseley’s team is committed to certain areas of improvement and sees it as another side of the playoffs: NGI. The victory has taken a huge shift in momentum, especially given that Ohio State has won two teams this season, as Mosley noted, they entered their backyard.
"It's really good to come out where we're not familiar with desert golf conditions and win with a little goal on our backs," he said.
National Golf Invitational:Score
The Buckeyes trailed Utah on day one, crossed them at the end of the 36-hole and slowly pulled away in the final round of Sunday.
Three Ohio State players make the top 7 alone, Buckeyes lead the Birds
"'Fighting' has been our mindset all the spring, so they hung up a great job there and it was really cool to take advantage of the chance we got them and make some birds stretch," Mosley said. "It's a great team win."
Although Ohio State spent a week on the other end of its Advanced Exodus to find out what the next chapter looks like, a similar transitional period awaits Utah in the fall. NGI was the last ride for graduates John Cook, Julio Arronte and Esteban Jaramillo.
Aggies made six team birdies in the first three holes on Sunday and hung in a few shots from Ohio State all day.
“We beat them on the first day, so I think they were like, ‘Well, we can do that,” Utah Gov. Dean Johnson said.
Sophomore Enrique Karg is the one who leads them, which bodes well for Utah State. Karg of Guadalajara, Mexico, made the top 20 in just one inning in the regular season. On the dunes in the south, he dropped to the gate with seven bogey-free under the age of 65 and attributed it to Sunday's playoff victory, his first solo champion of the year.
Karg is a player who has struggled on plates for the past year - from school to golf to family.
“My spring was tough this year,” Kag said. “I thought a lot, it’s a lot of up and down, so it’s great for me to do well in this event.”
Karger believes he used his distance in all three rounds to put himself in a favorable position, reaching a few 5 in two shots and leading with 4 shots. But this week wasn't all going well, with Johnson watching Cager fighting for the second round of the second round to stay in the game.
"The mark of true humans is the way they deal with adversity, you can't show up from 5 feet to 500 yards if he is making a taboo or a bird," Johnson said.
Karg finished this week on the 12 list of Under 204, he had to play an extra hole with Richmond's Carson Baez and nearly hit his 70-foot birdie putt on 18 additional tripsTh make it happen. His Tap-in-in par is good enough. He immediately placed his family at his Mexican home.
Thanks to his victory, Karg won a waiver for Southeastern amateurs, who will add a lineup for other amateur events (Memorial Amateur Memorial in Sacramento, California, Mexican International Amateurs in Guadalajara and American Amateur Qualification), which he has planned for the summer.
With Utah State scattered snacks, Cook, Arendt and Jaramilo will head to their careers. Johnson knew it would be thrilled to see them go. The team’s international makeup is largely thanks to the work of assistant coach Erik Skinner, who expanded the roster globally with the idea of Johansen and “find some of the best young people – the phenomenon of kids,” Johnsen said. He has always been interested in the entire player, not just Golf talent.
Johansen started his day on Sunday and did an early workout before driving along a few miles to the protein shake. When he entered the gas station, he met Cook, one of his three seniors. Cook has been working on staying healthy for the past three years, and he ran in the morning before the round.
As a runner, Cook fully demonstrates the level of commitment this senior class has for Utah. It's OK, they all reassembled their last race after graduation - Cook abandoned the entire marathon training cycle and skipped the Ogden (Utah) marathon on Saturday and came here with his team.
It's interesting that Johnson lost it three hours before his team kicks off.
"I drove back to the hotel and he was running around the side of the road and I just started to tear it up," Johnson said. "I'm proud of the young man he became."