The USDGC’s featured side action, The Dean’s Cup Invitational, kicked off on Friday with reigning Collegiate National Champion Georgia Regents-Augusta fending off host team Winthrop, and top ranked Colorado State defeated Clemson’s disc golf team.
Georgia Regents 73 (+6) – Winthrop 77 (+10)
Colorado State 62 (-5) – Clemson 65 (-2)
The match play contests were played in the same Team Doubles format used at the National Collegiate Disc Golf Championships in the spring.
Georgia Regents will now take on Colorado State on Saturday to determine the Dean’s Cup Winner, while Winthrop and Clemson will have a rematch of the collegiate exhibition at last year’s USDGC which Clemson won.
Only one member of Georgia Regents’ national championship squad (John Baker) was able to make it, but the team was still able to handle Winthrop, beating them by 4 strokes.
Georgia Regents team
Winthrop had a one stroke lead after the front nine, but they made triple bogey on Hole 10, relinquishing four strokes to Georgia Regents, who scored a birdie.
Baker also felt good about the team’s clean execution of Hole 13. He said securing par there, while Winthrop made double bogey, helped bring them home.
Going into the last hole, Colorado State was up by one stroke over Clemson, and they sealed it with a birdie there while Clemson struggled with OB and scored bogey, allowing CSU to win by three strokes.
When asked what the key was to the victory, Connor Mitts replied, “Staying in bounds – it always is at Winthrop.”
Teammate Reid McConnell was valuable early when he drained a tricky 35-foot putt among the trees that surround Hole 4’s green to save CSU’s par and maintain an early one stroke lead.
“That was a very clutch putt,” said Mitts.
