At the Pacific-10 Conference Championships, the Oregon men’s golf team found out the hard way that second place is hard to hold onto.
The Ducks did not veer much from the winning path they set down on Monday, but a few strokes was all it took to send Oregon back from second to fourth on the second day of play in Tempe, Ariz.
The Karsten Golf Course and the Arizona weather were not kind to the Ducks, but Oregon’s scores are not shockingly worse than they could have been. The highest score in the third round was T.J. Duncan’s three-over par 75. But unlike Monday, when the Ducks shot a total of five rounds under par, only Ryan Lavoie’s 71 was below par Tuesday.
“It’s not like they rolled over and died or anything,” Oregon head coach Steve Nosler said of his team. “They just didn’t play well enough, and it was kind of disappointing because the first two rounds we played pretty well.”
There are positives to the Ducks’ position. They still lead perennial golf powerhouses Arizona, UCLA and Stanford. Nosler is confident that his team is playing well enough to retake second place in today’s final round.
“I think if we go out and play the kind of golf we’re capable of playing tomorrow,” Nosler said, “we could get back in second place.”
Arizona State, host of the Pac-10s and No. 4, led by junior sensation Paul Casey, is leading the tournament by an impressive 32 strokes. California took second place from the Ducks, while Oregon State moved into third. Only seven strokes separate California and Oregon.
Casey has been shooting what Nosler calls “lights-out” golf in the tournament. The Sun Devils’ British phenom has a chance to break Tiger Woods’ record for the lowest score at a par-72 course in the Pac-10. Woods shot a 270 at the Big Canyon Country Club in 1996 when he played at Stanford. In order to break the record Casey needs simply to shoot under par today.
Oregon State is three strokes ahead of the Ducks because of an impressive third round by senior Tim Mickelson. The Beaver shot an eight-under-par 64 — a single-round school record and the best single round at the championships so far — to lead Oregon State into second place.
The Pac-10 Championships conclude today with an 18-hole round.