Servite Fourth After Playoff

An arduous battle with a tough golf course and fierce afternoon winds during the Southern Section team golf finals left several Orange County teams with bitter feelings and culminated in a bizarre playoff between two others.

And Servite emerged as the only county survivor Thursday at La Purisima Golf Course, shooting a team total 397 to tie Irvine for fourth, then defeating the Vaqueros on the third hole of a sudden-death playoff for the final berth in the June 8 CIF-SCGA championships at the SCGA Members Club in Murrieta.

Santa Barbara San Marcos shot 387 to win the title. Newhall Hart (391) and Westlake Village Westlake (392) won the remaining berths in the CIF-SCGA finals.

Thursday’s tournament, however, may be remembered not for the teams that played well, but for those that didn’t.

Seven teams--Santa Margarita, University, Long Beach Wilson, Palos Verdes Peninsula, San Luis Obispo, Cerritos and Apple Valley--each won regional titles to qualify for the team finals, averaging 373.

Their reward? Playing in the last five groups Thursday with tee times between 8:58 and 9:30, and having to battle winds that started as a modest breeze at about 10 a.m. and became a whipping, three-club frenzy about an hour later.

Those seven schools averaged 407 Thursday, five of them shooting more than 400 for the first time this year. Santa Margarita (402) was sixth and University (411) finished 11th.

“It’s sad that teams are penalized for playing as well as they could in the regionals,” University junior Brian Sinay said. “They should have known that the wind comes up here every day, it’s like clockwork. They should have accounted for that and made it a shotgun start.”

All players tee off at the same time in a shotgun event. In Thursday’s tournament, players started on the first and 10th tees.

San Marcos had tee times between 7:30 and 8:02, which helped them escape the high winds for at least nine holes.

Southern Section Commissioner Dean Crawley acknowledged the advantages of playing earlier, but he said La Purisima officials would not allow a shotgun start, as was used last year.

Westlake, Hart and Servite each finished second in their regions and had tee times between 8:18 and 8:50.

“This is the hardest course I have ever seen,” said Servite senior Justin Willett, who holed a 4-iron shot from 150 yards out on the 18th hole to help the Friars get in a playoff with Irvine for the final qualifying spot. “Especially when the wind started. It was definitely easier earlier.”

Nothing was easy about the strange playoff format. Instead of using the sixth score as a tiebreaker, as is common practice in most league matches, they used a best-five-of-six scores on a single hole.

They went in two groups of six on the first hole, but all 12 played together on the second hole in what turned into a scattering across the fairway and a clustered putting green.

“That was way too many people,” said Servite’s Nico Bollini, who tied for low round with 71.