The University of Cincinnati (UC) men’s golf team is the 2023 champions of the Dorado Beach Collegiate held in Dorado, Puerto Rico, after shooting a combined team score of 820 through three days. This is the third title the Bearcats have won this season and is the first of the spring season.
UC was amongst some elite collegiate companies in Puerto Rico, going against No. 2 Auburn University, No. 12 University of Virginia and No. 31 Duke University, according to Golfstat rankings. The No. 39 Bearcats won the title by nine strokes, beating out second-place Duke who shot a team combined 828 and the third-place tournament host University of North Carolina Greensboro who shot a team combined 833.
The Bearcats were in the driver’s seat for nearly the entirety of the tournament, sitting in second place out of fourteen teams after day one, and atop the leaderboard after the second day. This win marks just the third time in program history that the Bearcats have won three titles.
Freshman Ryan Ford was the Bearcats’ top performer in Dorado, shooting a 15-under 201, the second-lowest individual score in the whole tournament. Ford was locked in from his opening tee shot, finishing round one with a career-low 65. That 7-under score is a team low this season and the lowest tally by a Bearcat since a program record 64 by Clay Amlung in March of 2022.
Before this tournament, Ford’s highest career finish was No. 21 at the Badger invitational earlier this season. Ford was just three strokes away from becoming the Bearcats’ first freshman champion since Emerson Newsome in 2013.
Other notable performances came from senior Sam Jean who shot a 10-under 206 and juniors Ty Gingerich and William McDonald who both shot a 7-under 209. Jean has now finished top-10 in four of six tournaments this season. Gingerich has finished in the top 20 in all six tournaments this season.
“We executed our plan to near perfection,” UC head coach Doug Martin said. “We played the par-5s 48-under this week. Everybody contributed this week to this victory. Huge congrats to Ryan Ford on his second-place finish. We will celebrate and enjoy this today and tomorrow and get back to work on Thursday."
With this victory, the Bearcats will more than likely crack the top 25, if not a higher mark. Four more tournaments are left this season before the American Athletic Championship, and UC is red hot. Next up the red and black will travel to Bluffton, South Carolina, for the Colleton River Collegiate, a tournament in which they finished second last year.
