The men's golf team travelled to Springfield, Ohio over the weekend to play in the Rosencrans-Maurer Invitational. Out of the nine teams that participated, the Tigers finished in seventh place, shooting a collective two-day score of 614 (+38). They would have needed dramatically lower scores to have had a chance to win, as Wittenberg University shot a collective two-day score of 565 (-11).
“As a team we really didn’t play that well,” junior Quinn Smith said. “Two rounds under 310 is pretty solid for us, but in terms of the rest of the field, we kind of struggled. Seventh out of the nine really isn’t necessarily where we wanna be heading into conference, but there is definitely some positivity to take away from this.”
First-year Michael Wittenberg expected the scores to be higher than usual, as the conditions made for a difficult day of golf.
“The way that the course was set up it pretty much just tested every part of your game," he said. “Especially the greens. The greens were really tough.”
The Tigers' top individual performance came from Smith, Wittenberg and sophomore Andrew Derringer. Smith shot two consecutive 74s for a collective score of 148, which was good enough to give him sole possession of 15th place. Wittenberg posted rounds of 77 and 74 for a collective 151 while Derringer posted rounds of 75 and 77 for a collective 152, which placed them at 24th and 25th place, respectively.
First-year Jackson Mihevic noted that Wittenberg University was a few steps ahead of the competition this weekend, along with most of the others competitors.
“Wittenberg [University] is definitely a national powerhouse," he said. "I don’t know the exact number of times in a row they’ve won our conference, but they’re definitely the favorite, by far the best team. The other teams there were pretty solid as well.”
With the conclusion of play this weekend, the Tigers have officially begun their postseason, as they will be playing in the NCAC Conference Championship for the next two weekends.
“It’s gonna be very tough,” Smith said. “Obviously, we just lost by 49 strokes to Wittenberg and we have to beat them over two weekends and four rounds so we’re just trying to get the right people in the lineup to give us our best shot.”
The Tigers will begin play in their first two rounds of the NCAC Conference championships this weekend at Boulder Creek Golf Club in Streetsboro, Ohio.