Arizona men’s golf misses cut for NCAA Championship after struggling in Cle Elum Regional

Arizona men’s golf’s season came to a disappointing end Wednesday as the team failed to reach the NCAA Championship weeks after winning the Pac-12 title.

The Wildcats placed ninth at the NCAA Cle Elum Regional, well short of a top-five spot necessary to advance to the NCAA Championship.

Arizona was the No. 4 seed in the regional and was expected to benefit from playing on the west coast. However, the team never caught its groove on the course, shooting 22-over par across three rounds.

Not only did Arizona finish outside the top five, they placed behind Washington and Utah, who each shot 15-over par for a tie of seventh place.

Only three weeks ago, Arizona won the Pac-12 title by shooting a 41-under par at Mayacama Golf Club in Santa Rosa. That was 20 strokes ahead of Washington and 50, yes, 50 stokes better than Utah.

What changed?

Arizona’s senior leaders Brad Reeves, Trevor Werblyo, David Laskin each faltered at Cle Elum, as did the rest of the team.

Reeves led Arizona with a four-over par, while Laskin shot seven-over and Werblyo went eight-over. In a vacuum, none of those scores were terrible – all three finished in the top 40 individually – but the Wildcats didn’t have any one player step up with a superb showing.

Sophomore Chase Sienkiewicz and grad student Christian Banke shot 10-over and 11-over to drag Arizona’s score to the bottom of the leaderboard.

The poor showing at Cle Elum doesn’t take away from an otherwise impressive season by this team, but with the NCAA Championship being played up in the road in Scottsdale, the Wildcats will enter the offseason asking themselves ‘what if?’