The Kennesaw State men’s golf team came in 8th place at the Southern Dunes Invitational, hosted by the University of Southern California and taking place at the Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa, Arizona on Sept. 9 and 10.
The Owls finished the tournament with a 1-over par score of 865, trailing seventh place Kansas State by two strokes.
The team ended the first round with a 2-over par score of 290. The second round saw a very slight improvement as the Owls ended it at 289 strokes. Finally, they scored a 2-under par score of 286 in the third round, their best single round performance of the event.
“There are a lot of positives to take from this first event of the year,” said head coach Bryant Odom via the school’s athletics page for men’s golf. “We didn’t play to our standard overall by taking penalties and costing ourselves shots and momentum in places where we need better execution. However, these are things easily fixed and everyone on the team had stretches of excellent golf and positive improvement from last year.”
Leading the way for the team was Shaun Cook, who shot a 3-under par total of 213 for the event. His score tied him with four others at 12th overall amongst individuals. Cook finished with 12 birdies and 34 pars, both the highest for the team.
The Owls’ Hunter Gillard, playing individually, finished 4-over par with a score of 220, tying for 37th. Gillard finished with one eagle, nine birdies and 30 pars.
Freshman Luca Gallingani, in his debut for the Owls, finished at an even par in each round of the event, posting a final score of 216 and tying for 24th overall. The freshman made an eagle, 10 birdies and 33 pars in the event.
The Owls seemed to struggle the most on par-3 holes — they finished 21 strokes over par collectively on those, the worst of the eight teams present at the tournament, and four strokes worse than the next team, Eastern Michigan.
Par-4 holes were only slightly better for them, finishing 17 strokes over par on them. For comparison, the first place USC team finished 2-under par total for the same holes.
Birdies were hard to come by for the Owls, tying for second-worst at the event with 50 total. Grand Canyon and USC tied for the most birdies with 66 for each of them.
On the other hand, par-5 holes were a bright spot for the team. On those holes they finished 25 strokes under par as a team, third best among the competition and two strokes better than the next best team, in-state rival Georgia State.
