ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. \u2013 The Florida men’s golf team defeated Oklahoma 3-2 in the SEC Championship Quarterfinals on Saturday morning and advance to the semifinals vs. No. 3 Texas later this afternoon at 2:05 p.m.\u00a0with live coverage on SECN+ starting at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n
Florida moves to 2-0 all-time vs. the Sooners in conference tournament match play and 6-1 in the first round. The victory earns the sixth trip to the semifinals, which ranks second all-time only behind Texas A&M (7). UF is 3-2 in the semifinals, dropping its last final-four outing in 2018 vs. Alabama.<\/p>\n
The second-round match serves a rematch of last year’s NCAA National Championship Quarterfinals that the Gators rallied back 2-0 to defeat the Longhorns. Florida is 2-1 all-time vs. Texas with prior meetings in 2002 (Texas 3-2) and 2003 (Florida 3-2) in the Hooters Match Play, which the latter featured head coach J.C. Deacon<\/a> squaring off against UF as player for UNLV.<\/p>\n Also, the 11th win at the SEC Championship is second all-time and Florida is now only two back of leader Vanderbilt (13).<\/p>\n The winner between the Gators and Longhorns will face either No. 1-seed Auburn or No. 4-seed Ole Miss in the SEC Championship Finals tomorrow at 8 a.m. with live coverage on SEC Network.\u00a0The Gators look earn a spot in the match play finals for the third time in four years, which ranks second all-time in the confe\u00ad\u00adrence during a four-year stretch, only Vanderbilt has accomplished the feat with reaching the finals four straight years.<\/p>\n Florida controlled the second straight outing vs. the Sooners at Sea Island Golf Club, leading in three-plus matches throughout as when all five pairings were two or more holes in. Florida led in four of them and trailed only one hole in the other match.<\/p>\n At the turn, and early into the back nine the Gators started to pull away as Jack Turner<\/a> went 5Up and Zack Swanwick<\/a> 4Up through 10-holes while Matthew Kress<\/a> was 2Up and Parker Sands<\/a> 1Up through nine holes.<\/p>\n Turner secured the first point for Florida with a 5&4 victory as he won seven holes, tied five and only lost two in 14 holes played. Less than 30-minutes later, making his conference championship debut, sophomore Parker Sands<\/a> made it 2-0 with birdie on the 15th for a 5&3 win. The Edmond, Okla. native only dropped one hole while winning six holes and tying eight, and shot bogey-free 5-under.<\/p>\n As Sands cleared the green, Matthew Kress<\/a> put himself in the driver’s seat by driving the par5 (565 yards) 15th green to setup a two-foot eagle putt and go 3Up with four to play. He and his opponent PJ Maybank III, both made pars on the following hole and Kress secured the match-clinching point 3&2. Kress’ win was the program-record fifth all-time at SECs and ninth career in college match play. It also marked his third career match-clinching point at the conference championship – 2023 vs. Ole Miss (Quarterfinals) and vs. Texas A&M (Semifinals).<\/p>\n Oklahoma earns two points as Jase Summy was 1Up vs. Swanwick through 17-holes and Ryder Cowan 1Up over Luke Poulter<\/a> through 15-holes. The losses marked the first career for both Poulter and Swanwick in conference match play.\u00a0 SEC Championship Quarterfinals – No. 2 Florida (3) vs. No. 7 Oklahoma (2)
\n\u00a0
\nSEC Championship Semifinals – No. 2 Florida vs. No. 3 Texas\u00a0
\n2:05 p.m. – Zack Swanwick<\/a> vs. Daniel Bennett – Rematch of 2025 NCAA National Championship Quarterfinals – Swanwick won 2&1
\n2:15 p.m. – Luke Poulter<\/a> vs. Christiaan Maas
\n2:25 p.m. – Parker Sands<\/a> vs. Luke Potter
\n2:35 p.m. – Matthew Kress<\/a> vs. Matt Comegys
\n2:45 p.m. – Jack Turner<\/a> vs. Tommy Morrison<\/p>\n
\nJase Summy 1Up over Zack Swanwick<\/a> \u00a0(Through 17)
\nJack Turner<\/a> 5&4 over Coltrane Mittag
\nParker Sands<\/a> 5&3 over Clark Van Gaalen
\nMatthew Kress<\/a> 3&2 over vs. PJ Maybank III
\nRyder Cowan 1Up over Luke Poulter<\/a> (Through 15 holes)
\n\u00a0\u00a0
\nSEC Championship Match Play Bracket
\nNo. 1 Auburn 3.5-1.5 over\u00a0No. 8 South Carolina\u00a0
\nNo. 2 Florida 3-2 over\u00a0No. 7 Oklahoma
\nNo. 3 Texas 3.5-1.5 over No. 6 Mississippi State
\nNo. 4 Ole Miss 4.5-0.5 over No. 5 Texas A&M
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. \u2013 The Florida men’s golf team defeated Oklahoma 3-2 in the SEC Championship Quarterfinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-246430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}