Led by their one-two punch of Jon Rahm and Max Rottluff, ASU men's golf took home second place at the Tavistock invite.
The team hit +5 over three rounds and was only -5 away from beating first place Illinois but also edged out California, Florida in the final standings.
The rest of the Sun Devil lineup featured Alberto Sanchez, juniors Jared Du-Toit and Niccolo Galletti to the invite and faced UNLV and Florida in the first round.
The Sun Devils started off solid in the first round, hitting -3 and finishing off the afternoon in third place.
Rahm and Rottluff started off strong, each hitting below par (Rahm had -1, Rottluff had -4). The other golfers were also playing solid as well, with Du-Toit hitting the worst score with +2 and both Sanchez and Galletti hit +1.
The Sun Devils slipped up a bit, hitting +6 on day two but stayed in third place throughout the tournament.
ASU faced California and South Carolina for the second round, both teams that were winning the tournament after the first round.
Galletti struggled, falling from +1 to +12.
The Sun Devils did catch a break since South Carolina went +22 in the second round, dropping out of of the hunt for first place.
They got what they needed on day three as the team put up +2 and jumped up to second place. The team went up against California and Illinois for the third round and the players got it together in the last round. All but one of them were able to improve from the second rounds score and two of them. Rahm (-3) and Du-Toit (E) were able to get either before or at par.
Sanchez went down from +5 to +3, Galletti was able to cut his score from the second round in half to +6 and Rottluff had his worst day of the tournament with +2. The Sun Devils caught another break thanks to California slumping down to +21, which help propel Illinois and ASU to the top two spots.
After closing out its last meet of the semester, ASU's next meet is the Waikoloa Invite in Hawaii on Thursday, Feb. 4.
Reach the reporter at osoussi@asu.edu or follow @omarksoussi on Twitter.
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