The men’s golf team will take place in the River Landing Intercollegiate tournament this weekend, starting Friday morning. The tournament is a two-day event consisting of two rounds of golf being played Friday and a final round on Saturday.
The tournament, which has been in existence for 17 years, is being held at River Landing Country Club in Wallace, N.C.. It consists of 15 teams from all over the country, and includes four that are in Golfstat.com’s top-50 ranked teams. These teams include N.C. State, which is ranked 15th nationally, and Wake Forest, Virginia and Michigan, which are ranked 25th , 43rd , 44th, respectively.
“It’s a decent field for what we have played. There are five teams that we invited that are pretty decent that we don’t get to play against too often, so it’s always nice to play against a different team,” sophomore Matt Hill said.
The Pack is coming off a hot month of March, where as a team it finished second twice, fifth and sixth, including a fifth place finish at the Hootie at Bulls Bay tournament in Charleston, S.C. Overall on the season, the Pack has finished in the top-10 in all eight tournaments it has played in and has finished in the top five in six of them.
“Our team has been playing really well all year. We have basically done everything but win a tournament, so we would really like to get that off of our shoulder this week,” Hill said. “Doing that would be awesome. “
A lot of the success the Pack has been enjoying can be credited to sophomore golfer Matt Hill, who has been pacing the N.C. state team. Hill won back-to-back tournaments and had another top-five finish, all in the month of March. These accomplishments led to him being named the ACC golfer of the month and SGA National Amateur of the Month.
“Matt has been playing really, really well,” sophomore Brandon Detweiler said. “I think he is quite possibly one of the most underrated amateurs in golf.”
Detweiler said Hill’s recognitions by the ACC and SGA were a long time in the making.
“No one ever talks about him,” Detweiler said. “I don’t know why — he won three college tournaments this year one in the fall two in the spring. He just does everything well, and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. If he keeps playing the way he is playing people will be forced to recognize him.”
The Intercollegiate tournament is in its last year at River Landing due to the imminent completion of the Lonnie Poole Golf Course. The Lonnie Poole Golf Course, which is on the N.C. State campus, will host the tournament next year and every year for the foreseeable future upon its completion later this spring.
“It’s our home tournament, but it will be the last year we have [at River Landing because it will be at our home course next year,” Detweiler said. “It’s a solid course with a couple tight spots on the course you have to be careful about. The greens there are always very good so we are looking forward to that. We just hope the forecast warms up.”