UNL PGM Golf Team Wins Annual CONE Cup Competition

November 10, 2020
UNL PGM Golf Team with their trophy

The 13th annual CONE Cup competition was held on October 24th and 25th, 2020 in Edmond, Okla. The CONE Cup is a yearly two-day match play competition between the PGA Golf Management (PGM) programs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) and the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). The UNL team traveled down early Friday in order to play a practice round at Lincoln Park Golf Course where the first day of competition took place. Saturday morning the Four-ball matches started at 9:00 am and the temperatures were in the low 40s but the wind was fairly calm. The matches were lopsided, as all matches were either won or lost (no halved matches). Only one match went all 18 holes, team Rhiley and Sherman, and fortunately Sherman made a great 15-foot birdie putt after hitting the green from a difficult shot from the trees after an errant tee shot. This tied the matches three-to-three and only one match remained on the course—team Baldus and Largen. After a few errant shots, it came down to Largen and Brennan from UCO. Largen got a little unlucky as his approach shot from around 120 yards hit the flagstick and ended up around 30 feet from the hole. Had he not hit the flagstick in the air, the ball most likely would have stopped within a couple of feet. However, Largen two-putted for the win after Brennan failed to get up and down from just off the green. This made the first day score UNL 4 versus UCO 3.

The UNL PGM team, led by Brendan Bond as captain, decided to make sure they had the advantage in at least seven matches, giving them the required 11 points to win the Cup. This unfortunately meant that the team was sacrificing some of their players against the better UCO players in order to secure at least seven points. Day two individual matches were at Kickingbird Golf Course, the home course of the UCO PGA program. The individual matches were evenly split at six-to-six with only two matches remaining. Josh Baldus hit his tee shot on the 16th hole (par-3), to about 40 feet with a 2-up lead. His opponent failed to hit the green and then failed to get it up and down, securing the match for Baldus and the winning seventh point for UNL. The Cup returns to Nebraska after staying in Oklahoma the past two years. The final score was UNL 11 versus UCO 10. Full results can be viewed at golfgenius.com by signing in with GGID CONECUP2020.

UNL PGM Team: Josh Baldus, Brendan Bond, Sam Gage, Jackson Hamlin, Chase Largen, Andrew Martin, Kyle Murray, Taner Oelke, Jason Palmer, Chris Rasmussen, Bill Rhiley, Joe Sherman, Joey Utz and Noah Vahle.