The Bruins golf team competed in their largest tournament of the Spring season as the team placed 15th overall in the Point University Skyhawk Invitational in Pine Mountain, Georgia. While there were several bright individual performances over the course of 54-holes, the team struggled to piece together a strong team effort in the tournament.
"We failed to reach our team goal in any of the three rounds of the tournament," Bruins Head Coach Denny Scott said. "We had some solid play from different players, but we just didn't get the consistent contributions from all five golfers in the same round. We are moving in the right direction and hope to wrap up the Spring season and to take momentum into the summer to build for the fall."
The Bruins would be paired with sixteen other programs as over 100 golfers made up the tournament field. The two-day tournament would be played on the picturesque Callaway Gardens Golf Course with weather being cool and pleasant for the opening round. On day one, the teams would play 36 holes with the final 18 holes to be played on day two.
In the opening round, Isaac Childrey and Keaton Osteen both started with par as the Bruins looked to build momentum. Grant Bagwell also added a par but the team couldn't seem to convert on their birdie opportunities. Osteen finally broke the Bruins birdie drought as he recorded one near the end of the round to help the team finish with a team score 335 (Childrey - 81, Bagwell - 83, Osteen - 85, Jacobs - 86, Wiginton - 90).
After a short rest, the Bruins were back out on the course for the second round of the day. Keaton Osteen kept up the momentum as birdied two holes on the opening nine. He notched his third birdie of the round as he holed-out on a beautiful bunker shot later on in the round.
While Osteen turned in a solid round-two performance, the Bruins struggled to finish well as a team as they scored 339 in round two (Osteen - 80, Jacobs - 85, Wiginton - 86, Childrey - 88, Bagwell - 88). As the first day of the tournament came to a close, the Bruins found themselves in a tough spot near the bottom of the team leaderboard.
Rain was falling as the teams began the final round of the tournament on Tuesday. Grant Bagwell gave the Bruins a boost with a birdie early on while Haddon Wiginton used a nice bunker recovery shot to save par.
Bagwell recorded another birdie on the 5th hole and Childrey followed suite with a birdie on hole six. The Bruins were able to build their confidence with each shot as the team made a strong push to post their best score of the tournament 330 (Bagwell - 81, Wiginton - 82, Osteen - 82, Childrey - 85, Jacobs - 91).
"I was glad our lowest round was the last round because it showed that we kept focused on improving even though we were short of some of our team goals," Coach Scott said. "Playing 36 holes in one day always makes for a long day on the links, but it even seems longer when we can't seem to get any momentum. The greens were difficult to read and gave us some frustrations, but we kept a good focus. Still, we are not reaching our fullest potential and hope we can peak in time for our home match-play event in April."
Next up, the Bruins will compete in the Union College Bulldog Spring Invitational in Somerset, Kentucky on March 23.
Final Results
