Serra’s Kyler Heath takes second place as CCS golf finals

“He played great,” Heath said of Jew’s performance. “That’s all I can pretty much say. I played all right and he played great, and he deserves to be 5-under — seven birdies.”

Serra qualified for the CCS finals as a team, making the cut in last Tuesday’s preliminaries. The Padres finished fifth in the team element with 373 points. Stevenson claimed the team championship with 351, Palo Alto took second with 364, and St. Ignatius was third at 367. St. Ignatius and Carmel finished in a tie, but St. Ignatius earned the third and final team bid to Nor Cals by virtue of the tiebreaker with its No. 6 golfer outscoring Carmel’s No. 6.

Serra head coach Mike Landridge said his team scored well enough that it would have cracked the top three in previous years.

“We weren’t too far off with 373 but this was just an exceptional year,” Langridge said. “Everybody shot really low.”

Playing in the first group, Heath was in great shape individually when he wrapped up his final hole of the day. He was deadlocked with Jew at the top of the leaderboard, but Jew finished with a birdie on the 12th hole to take the lead, then capped a string of pars with another birdie on 17.

Heath opened the day on the back nine, the more challenging half of the course, and held his own by taking a 2-under into the final nine holes.

“Our strategy was don’t look at the leaderboard for the first half of the match. ... and just get to the front where we could start scoring,” Langridge said.

Heath executed the plan, opening the second half of his day with three straight birdies. On the 11th hole, he sunk a 40-foot birdie putt. Then on 12, he drove onto the green in two strokes, thanks largely to a monster 3 wood lining up 10 feet from the cup.

“I was hoping to continue it,” Heath said. “Just trying to keep the birdie train going.”

Heath went on to shoot par on the next four holes, and birdied the par 3 at 17. He went on to bogey on 18.

The sophomore’s finish marks Serra’s best CCS placer since 2013, when Isaiah Salinda captured the section championship with a 3-under 68 at Carmel’s Rancho Cañada Golf Course.

Serra’s day rounded out with Collin Firestone finishing tied for 21st with a 2-over 73; Blake Baldi tying for 25th with a 74; Jacob Vierneza tying for 48th with a 78; Jack Hickey tying for 56th with an 80; and Chris Philpott tying for 60th with an 82.

“We already expected the other teams were going to play well,” Heath said. “I’m pretty sure everybody on our team is already frustrated with how they played ... but overall I think our entire team played pretty solid.”

Crystal had three golfers playing in Tuesday’s finals, but none made the Nor Cal cut. Senior Edan Cui finished tied for seventh with a 1-under 70, and could have entered the playoff to determine the two final at-large bids to Nor Cals. Cui declined the playoff, however, leaving Los Altos’ Jack Wang, Gunn’s Rithvik Jayaraman and Carmel’s Cullen Pritchard to play a one-hole playoff, with Wang and Jayaraman advancing.

Crystal’s Arden Xu tied for 12th place with a par 71, and Henry Chen tied for 33rd with a 76.

Other county finalists were: Nueva’s Bence Ordody, tied for 18th, 72; Menlo-Atherton’s Graham Martin, 32nd, 75; Sacred Heart Prep’s Logan Mills, tied for 33rd, 76; and Terra Nova’s Leo Buhagiar, tied for 40th, 77.