BYU senior Robbie Fillmore
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EmailBYU and Cougars senior Robbie Fillmore both needed extra holes to win their first tournament of the season Tuesday at the Fresno State Lexus Golf Classic.
BYU, No. 54 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings, defeated San Diego on the first playoff hole at San Joaquin Country Club in Fresno, Calif. Fillmore birdied the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to beat UC Irvine’s John Chin and claim the first individual title of his career.
“This was a really exciting day,” BYU coach Bruce Brockbank said. “This is what college golf is all about. It was great for this team to step up and win. Robbie obviously played great, and I’m really happy for him. But we had six guys out there that all contributed. Hopefully we can build on this for the future.”
Fillmore, Golfweek’s 133rd-ranked player, helped the Cougars pick up their fourth top-5 finish this season, including their second this spring. They placed second at the John Burns Invitational in mid-February.
BYU finished at 20-over 1,085, beating a field that included six teams in the top 42 in the latest Golfweek rankings. No. 27 San Diego made the strongest push, firing a final-round-low 360 to force a playoff, but the Toreros made only one birdie and four pars in the playoff – BYU recorded four birdies and one par – to finish second.
No. 5 Washington was third at 22-over 1,087, No. 10 Oregon finished fourth at 1,088, and Michigan placed fifth at 1,092.
Fillmore was the surprising medalist winner, making seven birdies to shoot a final-round 67 and surge into a playoff with Chin (66). Fillmore and Chin finished at 5-under 208, three strokes ahead of Oregon sophomore Eugene Wong, who was coming off his first college victory, in which he shot a tournament-record 10-under 203 to win last week’s USC Collegiate Invitational. San Diego’s Scott Brace finished fourth at 1-under 212.
– Information from the BYU athletic department was used in this report.
