Men’s golf finishes 11th at Matlock

Posted by Aaron Levy, News Editor on Feb 17, 2013. Filed under Sports.

The men’s golf team began their spring season by finishing 11th at the Matlock Collegiate Classic’s 15-team field, hosted by Florida Southern College Feb 11-12.

“We weren’t really sure how we were going to do,” said Junior Jeff Evanier. “Getting back is always interesting.”

Evanier, 14th out of 75 individual competitors at 218 (+2) to pace the Tritons. Senior Paul Henderson, Junior Greg Reilly, and Freshman Johan Wahlberg finished t-42 at 225 (+9), while Junior Bobby Taggart finished t-63 at 232 (+16).
“We had one freshman who played from Sweden, and he hadn’t hit any balls anywhere other than indoors and into a net in two months,” Evanier said. “He shot a 69 (-3) the second round and so he did pretty good.”
Though the Tritons finished the tournament tied in 11th, their combined team total of 888 strokes was just 4 strokes behind 7th place.

Freshman Johan Wahlberg works on his putting stroke. (courtesy of Johan Wahlberg)

“We got off to a pretty slow start in the first round,” said Reilly. “We had a couple high scores, but it was nice to see that we were able to bounce back in the second round and gain ground. I think it shows how we can actually play and are mentally tough.”

Evanier agrees. “We can compete with the best teams in our conference. We took a lot of positive things away.”

The Tritons are looking to return to NCAA regionals in May, which they qualified for last year. They will need a strong spring campaign to get a bid for the second straight year, what would be a first in program history. The Tritons compete next at the Armstrong Atlantic Pirate Invitational in Pooler, Ga.,Feb. 25-26.

Posted by Aaron Levy, News Editor on Feb 17, 2013. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry