Day Three of NCAA Championships Ends with Rodrigues in Eighth, Aggies in 12th – Texas A&M Athletics

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Texas A&M junior Daniel Rodrigues remained in the top 10 and the Aggies were slotted 12^th as the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships finished the third round of stroke play Sunday at Grayhawk Golf Club.
 
Rodrigues was 2-over 72 in Sunday’s third round, despite sinking five more birdies. After three days on the par-70, 7,289-yard Raptor Course, he is tied for eighth place at 2-under 208. Georgia Tech’s Ross Steelman leads the field at 9-under 201. The NCAA individual champion is crowned after Monday’s fourth round.
 

The Aggies survived the first cut of the 30-team field, finishing day three at 17-over 857. The Maroon & White dropped one spot to 12^th place, but were one of the 15 teams to advance to the last round of stroke play on Monday.
 

The field will be trimmed down to eight teams for Tuesday’s match play quarterfinal round. Texas A&M is four strokes out of the eighth-place position, currently held by Florida State and Vanderbilt at 13-over 853. The fight for the last spots in the quarterfinals figures to be fierce as the separation between sixth-place Stanford (+10) and the Aggies is just seven strokes.
 
Illinois leads the field at 6-under 834 followed by Pepperdine (-3), Florida (-1), North Carolina (+1) and Georgia Tech (+2) in the top five spots.
 
Rodrigues, who ranks sixth in the tournament with 13 birdies through 54 holes, added three more on his first nine holes Sunday, but was foiled by a bogey and double bogey on his last three holes of the round
 
Phichaksn Maichon fired a 2-under 68 in the third round to jump into the top 25. He is tied for 23^rd place at 2-over 212.
 
Sam Bennett shot 1-over 71 and William Paysse rounded out the scoring at 2-over 72 as the Maroon & White were 3-over 283 on the day.
 
The Aggies begin fourth round action Monday, teeing off from the 10^th hole at 12:11 p.m. Central. Texas A&M is paired with Auburn and Virginia for the final round.
 
COACH KORTAN QUOTES
On the round…
“We did what we needed to do today. We got in the top 15 and made it through that cut. We got off to a better start today and they guys did a good job of making some birdies. They made shots to put us in a position to fight for a top eight spot tomorrow. Those were great things. But, we didn’t finish the round quite like we wanted to and gave some shots back. We…