The NC State golf team placed second out of 15 teams at the Golfweek Conference Challenge on Sunday at Spirit Hollow Golf Course in Burlington, Iowa.
The finish was a major improvement from the team’s first tournament, the Kiawah Invitational, in which the team finished fifth out of 12 teams.
The stacked field made the finish even more impressive, with defending national champions LSU finishing below the Wolfpack. Defending NCAA champion and U.S. amateur champion Bryson DeChambeau was also participating in the tournament.
The Pack opened up the tournament with an astonishing round Friday afternoon, shooting a team score of 269 [-19]. The round is the best ever in Wolfpack history, and skyrocketed the team to the top of the scoreboard by 12 strokes.
Four NC State players ended the day in the top 10 out of a field of 75 players, led by freshman Nolan Mills Jr. and senior David Cooke, each shooting a 66 [-6]. Junior Jacob McBride finished with a 68 [-4] and freshman Davis Richards ended with a score of 69 [-3].
The second day brought a change of momentum, and the Wolfpack was unable to match its staggering day one performance.
The team shot a total score of 295 [+7] on Saturday, 26 strokes higher than the previous day. Despite the drop in play, the Pack only fell one spot in the leaderboards, trailing host Iowa by seven strokes after shooting a combined total of 564 [-12] through two days.
Johnson led NC State with a 70 [-2] on Saturday and was also the only member of the team to shoot under par. All four NC State golfers that were previously sitting in the top 10 all dropped spots, with Richards and Mills Jr. leading the Pack tied at 13th.
The third and final day was an improvement from the previous one, and the Wolfpack made up three strokes on Iowa to finish second in this year’s Golfweek Conference Challenge.
“You come back out the last day, and now it’s a different mode,” said NC State head coach Richard Sykes. “You’re not leading, you’re chasing. And we played pretty well. We didn’t start off well; we actually started nervously, but we finished really well.”
The team accounted for the seven strokes they dropped on Saturday by shooting a team score of 281 [-7] on Sunday and combining for a three-round score of 845 [-19].
Richards led the Pack and finished in a tie for fifth overall with a score of 67 [-5], his best ever collegiate round. Richards shot a combined score of 209 [-7] in the tournament, followed by a 216 [E] from Mills Jr. and McBride.
“It was a nice event,” Sykes said. “We had a chance to compete, show what we could do and found out that we have to work on a few things.”
The Wolfpack is off to a great start this season, with success coming from the some of the younger members of the team.
The freshman, Richards, has now recorded two top-10 finishes this year and has been a bright spark for Sykes’s team this season.
Senior and team co-captain Cooke is currently in the midst of his third year on the team and talks of a balance this year that he has not seen in his previous two years.
“It’s a good thing because we’ve never had a big group of guys like this,” he said. “We’ve had like seven or eight guys on the team that have already played in the lineup, or that are going to play in the lineup. It’s good to know that you have guys that you can fall back on that are going to be serious about it.”
Cooke boasts an 18-hole career average of 73.37 strokes, but has not gotten off to the start he’d hoped for this season. Despite this, he remains calm and optimistic about the future of this team.
“Knowing that we have guys that are going to contend in tournaments, and if I can get back to that, and Carter and Stanhope, if we can all get back to that as a group,” Cooke said. “If all five of us are playing good golf at the same time, we’re going to win tournaments. We’re going to win big tournaments.”
Cooke and the Pack will be back on the course on Oct. 5 and 6 for the Wolfpack Fall Intercollegiate at Lonnie Poole Golf Course. This gives the team home course advantage, and it will be looking to capitalize on the opportunity to continue its strong start to the season.
