Thursday, May 29, 2003 | 10:11 a.m.
STILLWATER, Okla. -- Somehow, college golf's hydra grew another head Wednesday.
Karsten Creek Golf Course, already a beast, added a gusting wind to its caveats for the second round of the NCAA Golf Championships. Toss in an early morning tee time after a short night of rest and the unbearably slow pace of a 6-hour round, and UNLV had every excuse to fold after starting the day mired in 21st place.
The Rebels did just the opposite Wednesday, showing off the short memory of youth and displaying a gutsy disregard for Karsten Creek's upgrade. For as lost as the neophyte Rebels looked Tuesday on the unforgiving track, they appeared equally confident the next day in shooting a 12-over 300 to move up to eighth place at 37-over, 15 shots behind leader UCLA.
"We kept our routines through thick and thin out there," UNLV coach Dwaine Knight said, "That's what you really have to be able to do to compete for a championship."
UNLV teed off at 11:30 a.m. PDT today, the latest possible starting tee time. Given the slow pace, the Rebels are likely to finish their round with little daylight remaining.
The Rebels shared the second-best round Wednesday with Oklahoma State, Florida, Washington, and Oregon.
If not for three bogeys at straightforward No. 18 -- the easiest hole on the course Wednesday -- UNLV would have nothing but good memories of a gutsy run through the Karsten Creek gauntlet.
"That was still not as good as we could have done, but it was a pretty solid round for the condition that this course is in," UNLV sophomore Ryan Moore said.
With a 1-under 71 that tied for the day's second-best individual round, Moore started today in a nine-way tie for fourth place at 3-over, six strokes off the pace of Auburn's Lee Williams. Moore fired one of just 10 under-par rounds in the tournament's first two days.
"He scrambled like mad out there, especially the last few holes of the back nine," Knight said. "A 71, for where he hit it, was pretty awesome."
UNLV senior Brien Davis, a 5-foot-9 grinder in glasses, shot a 3-over 75 to recover from Tuesday's round of 81. Sophomore J.C. Deacon played beautifully on his way to a 4-over 76, and freshman Ryan Keeney shaved two strokes from Tuesday to post a 6-over 78.
But ask any Rebel and he will tell you that Moore is the team's leader on the course. The 20-year-old sophomore did so Wednesday by cutting through the sticky humidity to tame Karsten Creek at its worst, on a wind-blown day where the average score went up nearly half a stroke from 78.49 to 78.95.
"I think that was one of the better rounds of my entire life, shooting a 71 out there," Moore said.
He found so many stretches of the lockbox rough that swallows even slight misses. But Moore got up and down from the bunker on the par-3 No. 15 and saved an approach buried in the deep stuff on the par-4 No. 16 before grinding a par at the course's toughest hole, the par-4 17th.
Only a 10-foot chip that missed by inches and ensuing two-putt bogey on the finishing hole prevented Moore from a dream finish.
"We're not out of it," Moore said. "I don't really know where the leaders are at, but on a golf course like this, anything could happen. Anybody can shoot any number -- you just never know."
The wind somehow toughened a course that many thought played as tough as any nationals track in nearly a decade.
"Definitely today was a tougher day," Keeney said. "We hadn't really seen this golf course in 15 mile an hour wind, which isn't a whole lot by Oklahoma standards or even Vegas standards.
"But every hole is such a corridor of trees that ... once your ball gets up out of those trees and in the air, it's at the wind's mercy, and 15 miles per hour is enough to put you in the (rough)."
It did not faze UNLV, though -- four of five Rebels bested their first-round scores.
"It's a different type of championship than we've played this year with these guys," Knight said. "But the more they're back here in something like this, you get used to it. You know what to expect and you get a few over par, and I don't think you get really anxious or excited about it. You just play through it."
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