No. 21 Arkansas and TCU were tied atop the leaderboard late Friday in the first round of the NCAA men's golf championships in Eugene, Ore.
The Razorbacks and Horned Frogs each shot 2-over 282 rounds with three teams still on the course at Eugene Country Club.
No. 3 Southern California, No. 8 Vanderbilt and No. 22 San Diego State all shot 3-over 283 and are tied for third.
Some of the nation's top teams struggled on the opening day. No. 1 Stanford finished its afternoon round at 12 over and tied for 24th place, while SEC champion and No. 6 Georgia was tied for 21st. No. 2 Texas was at 9 over and tied for 13th and No. 4 Illinois was 10 over and tied for 17th.
Kolton Crawford, playing in the fifth spot in the lineup, paced the Razorbacks with a 2-under 68 that left the senior tied for fourth place individually. Crawford had four birdies, on Nos. 4, 8, 10 and 15, and posted bogeys on 9 and 11.
Vanderbilt's Theo Humphrey, San Diego State's Nahum Mendoza III and South Carolina's Will Starke were tied in the medalist race after 3-under 67s.
Arkansas senior Taylor Moore had pars on every hole on the back nine and finished the first round at even-par 70, tied for 17th. Senior Nicolas Echavarria and sophomore Alvaro Ortiz were both at 2 over, and freshman Charles Kim posted the team's non-counting score with a 3-over 73.
The Razorbacks, plagued by bad starts at the SEC Championships and the NCAA Kohler (Wis.) Regional, led the first pack of teams by as many as three strokes midway through the back nine.
Florida State's Cristobal Del Solar had the day's highlight with a hole-in-one on the par-3, 192-yard 14th hole.
Arkansas will tee off on No. 10 at 2:42 p.m. today with playing partners South Carolina and Oregon.
After three rounds of stroke play, the field will be cut to 15 teams for one more round Monday. The field will be cut afterward to eight teams for match play.
Sports on 05/28/2016