Idaho finishes ninth out of tough 24-team field
Sometimes it’s hard to tell what level a team is at until it competes against other teams. The Idaho men’s golf team may have learned more about itself over the weekend when it competed in its first event of the spring.
The Vandals finished ninth out of 24 teams at the Wyoming Desert Intercollegiate, which took place Friday through Sunday in Palm Desert, California. The Vandals shot a three-round, 25-over-par 889. They shot a 290 in the first round, 294 in the second and 305 in the third.
“I’m not upset because I saw a lot of good things,” Idaho coach John Means said. “I saw a lot of good ball striking and I saw some good course management.”
Means said the wind picked up each day of the tournament. He said Friday the wind was calm, Saturday it picked up a little more and Sunday was the windiest.
“I thought they handled the wind pretty well (Saturday),” Means said of his team. “It wasn’t great. It wasn’t perfect, but they handled it well.”
Means said his team hasn’t played in windy conditions since the fall season, so he hopes there is wind to practice in for the team’s next event.
Next up, Idaho will fly across the country to Aiken, South Carolina, to compete in the Cleveland Golf Palmetto March 9-10.
The Wyoming Desert Intercollegiate featured some of the top teams in the country.
TCU won the event shooting a 9-under-par 855. Texas Tech, ranked No. 19 in the country according to the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) Poll as of Friday, took second carding an 8-under-par 856. Oregon, ranked No. 2, took fifth with a 14-over-par 878. Denver took third and Kansas State finished fourth.
Idaho sophomore Jared du Toit led the Vandals by shooting a 1-over-par 217 to tie for 10th out of 128 golfers. He posted his best score in the third round by firing a 1-under-par 71.
Senior Aaron Cockerill shot the second-best score for the Vandals with a 4-over-par 220 to tie for 23rd.
Cockerill got off to a hot start. He fired a 1-under-par 71 in each of his first two rounds before shooting a 6-over-par 78 in the third round.
For the rest of the Vandals, sophomore Ryan Porch tied for 50th, freshman Daniel Sutton tied for 77th and junior Rylee Iacolucci tied for 91st.
Means said he would have liked to have seen better scores from his team Sunday. He said you can gain ground on teams when the wind is blowing.
“So many players, when it’s windy, quit,” Means said. “They just get so mentally tired of struggling and they just quit, so our guys didn’t do that. They didn’t quit. But they didn’t get the ball in the hole and they got to be able to do that.”
Texas Tech’s Clement Sordet won the event by carding an 11-under-par 205, TCU’s Paul Barjon finished second with a 7-under-par 209 and Denver’s Petter Mikalsen took third with a 5-under-par 211.
Garrett Cabeza can be reached at [email protected]