A victorious dramatic rally in the round of 16 on Wednesday propelled Ooltewah resident and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga golfer Oliver Simonsen to three more wins and the 2018 Tennessee Match Play championship at Council Fire Golf Club.
Simonsen, a former City Prep champion and high school state runner-up from Baylor, defeated good friend Ben Rebne 4 and 3 in the semifinals Thursday morning and then won 3 and 2 over Michael Barnard, a recent graduate of Beech High in Hendersonville.
Barnard needed 20 holes for his semifinal victory over Nashville's Warren Cheney and quickly fell two holes down in the final as Simonsen birdied Nos. 1 and 2.
Birdies at Nos. 6, 9 and 11 got Simonsen to 4 up, and after a bogey at 12 he birdied 16 to end the match and become the sixth UTC men's player to win a Tennessee Golf Association tournament in Mark Guhne's 13 years as head coach, according to a school release. Simonsen, whose father Henrik is the director of golf at The Honors Course, is a redshirt sophomore for the Mocs.
Down four holes through seven against former Tennessee Tech player Lee Maxwell of Cookeville in the round of 16, Simonsen still trailed by two with two holes to play but won both of those and the 19th to advance to the quarterfinals, where his hot start resulted in a concession by No. 1 seed Tim Jackson halfway through.
Then came Rebne, the son of Council Fire head professional Richard Rebne and a former Heritage High standout who now plays for NAIA national power Dalton State. He rallied for two wins Wednesday but got too far down too fast against Simonsen, who was 4 up through six holes and again through 11.
Rebne halved that margin twice with consecutive birdies, but Simonsen got it back on Nos. 14 and 15, closing out the match.
"It was bragging rights," Simonsen said of the semifinal matchup in a TGA release. "Ben is a great player. We made it feel like it was a regular day, me and him calling each other to play a match just to see who wins."
In his last 65 holes of match play, Simonsen won 24 and lost only eight, according to UTC's release. And on a day when one fellow Baylor alumnus, Luke List, shot 70 in the first round of the British Open and two others, Harris English and Stephan Jaeger, matched that number in the PGA Tour's Barbasol Championship, Simonsen won an individual championship.
"This means a lot," he said in the TGA release. "I've had a rough stretch over the past year where I couldn't find my swing. Me and my dad have worked really hard to get my swing to where it is now, and it's really paid off.
"Unfortunately my dad couldn't be here. He's in Scotland right now for the British Senior Open qualifying."