CMS Men's Golf Earns SCIAC Title, Automatic Bid to NCAA Championships

GolfStat Scoring

BEAUMONT, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's golf team finished off a dominant year in SCIAC play by taking the SCIAC Championship by eight strokes on Tuesday afternoon at Morongo Golf Club at Tukwet Canyon, the 14th SCIAC title in program history.

CMS came into the day with a four-shot lead over Redlands and doubled it by shooting a 294, compared to a 298 for the host Bulldogs. Over the course of the entire SCIAC season, including two regular season tournaments of two rounds each, CMS finished 35 shots ahead of Redlands in the battle for the automatic bid. 

Yuefeng (Michael) Ma captured individual medalist honors at the SCIAC Championship as the only player in the red, finishing at -2 for the week with a 214 (71-70-73). He ended up three shots ahead of Spencer Leader of Redlands, and five shots ahead of John Williams of Whittier in third. 

Mason Chiu was named the co-winner of the Jesse Clark Sportsmanship Award at the conclusion of the tournament, after shooting a 72 on Tuesday to tie for the lowest score in the field over the final round, thanks to a pair of eagles on the ninth and 16th holes. He ended the tournament in fourth place, and was joined in the top 10 by his younger brother, Adrian Chiu, in seventh place and Vijay Jain in ninth.

Ma earned the individual title with some incredibly steady play down the stretch, finishing with nine pars in a row on the back nine, after making the turn with a birdie on the ninth hole. He also had a birdie on the fourth, and had to steady himself after a double-bogey on the sixth, which turned out to be the last hole of the tournament in which he didn't make par. 

Jain had an impressive stretch on the front nine of four birdies in a row (No. 2 through No. 5), before finishing his final round with a 74 to move up to 10th. Will Parker also had three birdies in the first four holes of the back nine. 

CMS will be back in action when it heads to the NCAA Championships May 10-13 at Mission Inn Resort in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida.