Former UF men's golfer and national champion Nick Gilliam.
Harry Fodder: Gilliam Shared Belief in Fate
Wednesday, May 31, 2023 | Men's Golf, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Mere moments after Ricky Castillo drained his pressure-packed, mega-clutch, match-clinching birdie putt to win his NCAA Championships semifinal marathon Tuesday night against Florida State, Nick Gilliam, one of the greatest golfers in Gators' history, texted a short video to a group chat reserved for a handful of local UF faithful.
Anyone remember this?
J.C. Deacon was included on that text blast, but the Florida coach likely didn't need to be reminded of Ben Crenshaw's classic sound bite from the United States's stunning comeback victory to defeat Europe in the 1999 Ryder Cup. He'd just witnessed live one of the great rallies in UF sports lore, with his team coming from two points down with six holes to play for a 3-2 victory in the program's first crack at the match-play championship format the NCAA implemented in 2009.
Second-seeded Florida will face fifth-seeded Georgia Tech for the national title Wednesday, beginning at 4:35 p.m. at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The Gators will be seeking their fifth NCAA championship in program history and first since 2001 when Gilliam not only led the team to the crown but also claimed the individual championship.
On Monday, Gilliam was glued to the Golf Channel as fifth-year senior Fred Biondi clawed from two strokes down with three holes to play to beat Tech's Ross Steelman and become UF's first individual champ since Gilliam 22 years ago (and just the third in program history, along with Bob Murphy in 1966). On Tuesday, Gilliam again was riveted to the tube as three Gators — first Biondi, then John DuBois, then Castillo on his 39th hole of the day and third of sudden death — wiped out the Seminoles' two-point lead with jaw-dropping rallies, culminated by Castillo's 16-foot birdie to defeat FSU's Brett Roberts 1-up for the decisive point.
"As a former individual champion on a team that won it that same year, the team was always more important to me. It just was," Gilliam said. "So to see Ricky make that putt, to bury it for his teammates, that was an emotional moment for me … and I'm not even in the program." Nick Gilliam, the Gator
Oh, but he's certainly a big part of the program's rich tradition that dates to 1925 and includes 16 Southeastern Conference championships, including the 2023 crown, and four NCAA titles (1968, '73, '93 and 2001). The Gators will try to take that latter number to five in Deacon's ninth season leading the squad, with this run representing the team's deepest since Deacon, then an assistant at Nevada-Las Vegas, replaced Hall-of-Famer Buddy Alexander, who retired after 27 seasons in 2014.
"It's long overdue and I'm really excited for them," Gilliam said.
Under Deacon, Florida's best showing at NCAAs was last year's 10th-place finish. UF had only four top-10s in the 19 contested national championship tournaments since the Gilliam-led Gators destroyed the field with an 18-stroke victory over second-place Clemson in '01 at Duke University Golf Club and had never advanced past the stroke-play portion to take part in the high-pressure, hole-by-hole match-play elimination format.
To get there this time, UF put together four solid qualifying rounds to sit firmly under the cut lines that whittled the tournament field from 30 to 15 after Friday-through Sunday's three rounds, then from 15 to eight after Monday's fourth.
Highlighting those four rounds were Biondi's four sub-par scores — 69, 68, 69 and 67 — that kept him in individual contention, albeit five strokes back early in the fourth. Biondi, though, handled the circumstances better than Steelman, who bogeyed the final three holes and allowed Biondi, with a trio of pars, to surge from two back and put himself in the UF record books with a title-clinching putt on 18.
Biondi and his teammates, who shot a collective 2-under in stroke play, had little time to savor the moment. The Gators teed off against No. 7-seed Virginia in the quarterfinals at 6:20 a.m. local time Tuesday. At one point, they trailed the Cavaliers in four of the five matches on the front nine, but flipped the script behind a gutty rally from Yuxin Lin to net a 3-2 team victory and set the stage for even more drama (with less than 90 minutes between matches) in the semifinals later in the day.
"Match play has made it more of a team event and is better for viewership for golf in general," Gilliam said.
That certainly was the case late Tuesday night. Castillo's birdie putt to defeat the Seminoles rolled in at 9:18 p.m.
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Second-seeded Florida will face fifth-seeded Georgia Tech for the national title Wednesday, beginning at 4:35 p.m. at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The Gators will be seeking their fifth NCAA championship in program history and first since 2001 when Gilliam not only led the team to the crown but also claimed the individual championship. 
