BIG EAST Title Quest Starts Monday for Pirates - Seton Hall University Athletics
The Seton Hall men's golf team will wrap up the 2021-22 regular season with the marquee event on its calendar, the BIG EAST Championship, April 25-27, at Callaway
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PINE MOUNTAIN, GA. – The Seton Hall men's golf team will wrap up the 2021-22 regular season with the marquee event on its calendar, the BIG EAST Championship, April 25-27, at Callaway Resort and Gardens.
Seton Hall has had one of its best years in program history in 2021-22. The Hall's current 288.50 scoring average is a program record. The prior low mark was a 290.68 during the 2016-17 campaign. The Pirates have won three tournament titles, the Daniel Island Invitational, Ross Collegiate Classic and The Big Texan, which is tied for second-most in a year. Despite large fields, in six tournaments this spring, the Pirates haven't placed worse than fourth.
Seton Hall has won two prior BIG EAST team titles, but hasn't lifted the trophy since 2000. Pirate legend Lloyd Jefferson Go became the third BIG EAST individual champion with a program record for the conference championship 6-under-par in 2016. Current graduate students Andres Acevedo (San Antonio, Texas) and Gregor Tait (Martlesham Heath, England) received All-Tournament honors last spring when they tied for fifth.
With an impressive Golfstat ranking of 95, the Pirates are very much considered a title contender and will be the No. 2 seed entering the tournament. This year, they'll compete on a new championship course as the former BIG EAST home, Callawassie Resort, undergoes renovations. This year's competition will be at Callaway Resort & Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia.
Tournament Details:
2022 BIG EAST CHAMPIONSHIP
Host: BIG EAST Conference
Location: Pine Mountain, Ga.
Resort: Callaway Resort and Gardens
Course: Mountain View
Course Vitals: Par-72, 7,057 yards
Dates: April 25-27, 2022
THE COURSE
Callaway Resort & Gardens' golf pedigree stretches back more than six decades to 1949, when architect J.B. McGovern, with considerable input from Cason Callaway, designed the first nine holes of the Lake View Course. Completed and opened in 1951, Lake View perfectly captured Mr. Callaway's vision that "playing golf should be a pleasant experience in beautiful surroundings."
The Callaways understood the beauty and importance of golf. Mr. Callaway was on the founding Board of Trustees of the Georgia State Golf Association. Almost from the beginning, the Gardens served as a competition venue, with Jack Key of Columbus, Ga. winning Callaway's first-ever tournament, the 1951 Men's One-day Golf Tourney.
This challenging, but playable layout on the Mountain View course will test your strategic and shot-making abilities, just as it did for PGA Tour pros when it hosted the Buick Challenge from 1991 to 2002. The list of winners is a who's-who of Tour stars, with champions including Davis Love III, David Duval, Steve Elkington, David Toms, and Jonathan Byrd.
THE FIELD
The field will be limited to only the 10 member schools of the BIG EAST Conference. Below are the teams in order of their by their Golfstat ranking.
- SETON HALL – 95
- Marquette – 99
- Creighton - 134
- Connecticut – 152
- Georgetown – 191
- St. John's – 211
- Villanova = 214
- Butler – 237
- Xavier – 238
- DePaul - 251
Teams will play five golfers and count the four lowest scores per round.
THE LINEUP
Seton Hall will be bringing the following lineup to Georgia:
- Andres Acevedo, Graduate Student
- Wenliang Xie, Junior
- Gregor Tait, Graduate Student
- Angus O'Brien, Freshman
- Deven Ramachandran, Senior
LAST TIME OUT
Tait shot a 1-under-par, 70, to fuel the Pirates to a fourth-place team finish at the Rutherford Intercollegiate on Easter Sunday. Tait used four birdies and 11 pars to power his strong final round. For the tournament, he placed fifth with an even-par, 74-70-213.
As a team, the Pirates shot a 12-over-par, 296, on Sunday. For the tournament, they were 19-over-par with a 285-290-296-871. Host Penn State rallied to win the team title at 12-over-par, followed by Michigan State at 14-over-par and St. Mary's at 17-over-par. Two other BIG EAST competitors were also in the field with Georgetown finishing in eighth place at 35-over-par and Connecticut tying for 10th at 44-over-par.
The top Pirate golfer for the tournament was junior Wenliang Xie (Zhaoqing, China). He had two birdies and 12 pars to shoot a 2-over-par, 73, in round three. For the event, he tied for third place, only two strokes off the lead, with a 1-under-par, 68-71-73-212.
LAST YEAR AT THE BIG EAST CHAMPIONSHIP
Tait fired a 3-under-par, 69, in the final round to lift the Pirates to a third-place finish at the 2021 BIG EAST Championship at Streamsong Resort in Bowling Green, Fla.
Tait was brilliant in round three, using five birdies to record the top Pirate round of the tournament. Tait tied for fifth place among all individual golfers, which qualified him for BIG EAST All-Tournament Team honors. For the tournament, he shot an even-par, 74-73-69-216.
Collectively, Seton Hall had another strong performance in round three, firing a 7-over-par, 295, the second-best third-round of the field. The performance helped the Pirates vault Butler and finish in third place among the nine-team field. For the three-day event, The Hall was 18-over-par with a 296-291-295-882. Connecticut won the team title at 5-over-par. Marquette finished second at 11-over-par.
THE STAKES
The BIG EAST will crown a team champion, which earns an automatic berth to the 2022 NCAA Championship. The individual champion also receives an NCAA Championship invitation.
TEE TIMES
The field will play one round (18 holes) over each day for three days. Competition on each day will begin at 8:20 a.m. Seton Hall will be paired with golfers from Marquette in round one and will tee off of the first hole. The Pirate schedule looks like this for Monday…
RAMACHANDRAN (HALL) and Josh Robinson (MU) – 8:20 a.m.
O'BRIEN (HALL) and Nicolas Evangelio (MU) – 8:29 a.m.
TAIT (HALL) and Max Lyons (MU) – 8:37 a.m.
XIE (HALL) and Tyler Leach (MU) – 8:46 a.m.
ACEVEDO (HALL) and Hunter Eichorn (MU) – 8:54 a.m.
THE RESULTS
Live scoring will be available at GolfStat.com. Full day results will also be available at SHUPirates.com.
