Men’s golf maintains high hopes for the season

By Aaron Graff

 

The SIU men’s golf team’s performance at the Illinois State University D.A. Weibring Intercollegiate in Normal may have been less than satisfying, but the team has already made moves to improve over the remainder of the season.

Despite the tournament’s outcome, the Salukis are building team chemistry and figuring out the little things to move forward. The players admitted to rough patches that led to poor scores, but said the weather and course had some influence as well.

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Sunday was by far the better of the two for the Salukis. Their 36-hole score as a team was 590, which was good for 22 strokes over par.

On Monday, the poor weather hindered the Salukis, as they were 20 more strokes over par after another 18-hole round.

“Truthfully, we can’t blame it on the weather, everybody plays in the same thing,” said head coach Leroy Newton. “We had a couple kids get off to a tough start.”

Newton said he was disappointed with the team’s 11th-place finish out of 15 teams. He said he thought they played pretty well the first day and could have had a better second day to finish around sixth or seventh.

Sophomore Drew Novara and junior Steve Souchek led the team after the first day with 147 and five strokes over par. Souchek scored six strokes over on his first 18 holes, and came back to shoot one stroke under par on his second round.

“It was great,” Novara said about Souchek’s second round. “On 36-hole days, it is usually a lot harder to go shoot a lower score in your second round, especially after it has been raining.”

Novara’s key to success was his short game. He said he sank a couple of putts he probably should not have made, and felt good about that. After Monday, he led the team with the lowest round, finishing eight strokes over par with a score of 221.

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The team also saw more Missouri Valley Conference opponents at this tournament, including new addition to the conference, Loyola, who went on to win the tournament by one stroke. Illinois State, Northern Iowa, Evansville and Bradley all placed higher than SIU. Yet Missouri State, who placed higher than SIU at the SIU-Edwardsville Derek Dolenc Invitational, finished two strokes behind the Salukis.

Newton and the team all have a good vibe going forward. Souchek and Novara said that once the team gets to know one another a little better, trust each other a little more and learn how to play more as a team, that they will start slowly climbing the leaderboards at tournaments.

Newton said overall the team was disappointed, but has high hopes for the rest of the season. The team did not put all the good scores together, and Newton said he did not want to count scores in the high 70s or low 80s.

“We had good scores, but we did not put all four of them together,” Newton said. “We had two pretty good scores, and the other two would be a little bit higher than what we expected.”

The team’s next competition is Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at the Kansas State Jim Colbert Intercollegiate in Manhattan, Kan.

Aaron Graff can be reached at 

[email protected] 

or 536-3311 ext. 282.

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