The No. 19th ranked men’s golf teamed didn’t kick its spring season off as well as it wanted to as the team finished in 8th place in the Puerto Rico Classic, at the Rio Mar Golf Club. The tournament was a three-day event that consisted of fourteen teams, eleven of which were ranked in the top-50 according to Golfstat.
State finished with a team score of +7 well behind the first place score of Alabama, which checked in with a 54-hole team score of -28. The highest individual finishes for the Pack were freshman Albin Choi and sophomore Mitchell Sutton, who both finished their final round with a combined score +1, which tied for 23rd place.
Senior Brandon Detweiler finished at +7 for the Pack, and was able to recap the team’s performance with only a few words.
“It was not very good,” Detweiler said. “I think that pretty much sums it up. Nobody really played great.”
Consistency was a key for the Pack, or the lack there of it as each member of the five man team, couldn’t manage to put up three solid scores. Choi sandwiched a 3-over between to 1-unders, while a +5 on the first day of competition put junior Chad Day in a hole he couldn’t dig himself out of for the rest of the tournament.
“We all played decent at least a couple of day and then we each had a round where we struggled,” Sutton said. “I played all right, I had one consistent round, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for or expecting and same for the team. We finished right in the middle of the pack and we should have done a lot better.”
Unlike the semi-drought Raleigh is in right now, Puerto Rico had plenty of rain which made for some tough playing conditions as the course was drenched throughout the tournament. However, Sutton made sure to not that the weather was not the reason for the team’s poor play.
“The course was wet for the most part,” Sutton said. “The greens were a bit rough and bumpy but everyone had to play on them so everyone was playing on the same field. So there are no excuses.”
Playing a part in the teams performance was its inability to really practice on the grassy conditions that a tropical climate like Puerto Rico offers.
“All of the grass back home is dormant Bermuda, so that really affects you around the greens right now,” Detweiler said. “Down here you have some thick Bermuda rough that you have to pitch out of and we just haven’t practiced that in three months easy. So that is tough to really get back to that because the only way you are going to ever be a good chipper out of the rough is with a lot of practice, which we just haven’t had.”
Junior Mark McMillen rounded out the team’s scoring shooting a +11 .
With the lackluster performance, the team understands that it has to get back on the right track and do it quickly as it’s next competition is less than two weeks away when it travels to Orlando, Fla., to play in the Rio Pinar Invitational.
“We better get better and we better get better quick,” Detweiler said. “Because we have to leave in a week and a half for our next event.”
