Will Hermens
After strong first rounds last week, the men’s golf team continues to work toward back-to-back Northwest Conference championships.
“Being that we had been practicing for a little more than a week, we played well,” head coach Greg Copeland said.
In the team’s first competition since winning the fall championship, Copeland said he did not know what to expect.
Fitch led the team with rounds of 78 and 74. The NWC honored Fitch this week by naming him the conference men’s golf Student Athlete of the Week. Fitch’s consistent play last week sparked the team’s second-day improvements, but Copeland anticipates more advancement in key areas in practice this week.
“We need to get more consistent,” Copeland said. “We want to work on putting and short game. It is hard to chip consistently.”
With a different course layout than most of the conference courses the team is accustomed to, its short game became sporadic last week. The team practiced hard this week on putting and chipping before the next competition Copeland said.
The team should win at the Puget Sound Invitational on March 5 and 6, Copeland said.
“We won the last couple of years at this event,” he said. “We won in the fall.”
After winning the fall events and championship, he said he feels as though the rest of the conference views Linfield as a tough competitor. Winning by a significant margin this week would set the tone for the remainder of the season, Copeland said.
“We don’t want to put a lot of pressure on the first four,” Copeland said about the five competitions the team has in March. “The last one counts 25 percent toward the conference, so we want our games to be in the best shape going into that match.”
At the Puget Sound Invitational, Linfield faces four other conference opponents. The team won on the same course last spring, and Copeland said he thinks the team will do the same this week.
As of March 6, the team has completed day one of the invitational at the Fircrest course in Tacoma, Wash.
Linfield completed the first round of play with a 17-stroke lead.
Leading the Wildcats was junior Tyler Nelson with a tournament-best score of 69. The men, with a team total of 295, were followed by University of Puget Sound with 312, Pacific Lutheran University with 313, and Willamette University with 324.
The team will finish out the tournament March 6.
Next week, the team travels to play in the Pacific Invitational at the Pumpkin Ridge course in North Plains, Ore.