Fresno
not kind to 49er golf
By
Karl Peterson
Daily Forty-Niner
The
men's golf team struggled to find the fairways
in the Fresno State Lexus Classic last Friday
and Saturday and finished 13th out of 15
teams.
The
tournament was played at the Belmont Country
Club which is a relatively short course
but with very narrow fairways. The narrowness
of the course and inaccuracy of The Beach
led to high scores and a disappointing tournament.
"It's
not a tough course but it's tight,"
head coach Bob Livingstone said. "If
you're a little bit off [on drives and approach
shots] you're going to be behind a tree."
After
the first day of play Livingstone took his
players out to dinner in an effort to calm
nerves before the final round, but the 49ers
were unable to rally as the team shot 293,
only one shot better than its first round
score and finished 41 strokes back of the
tournament winner.
"It
was good competition, but we played terrible,"
Livingstone said. "It was like the
perfect storm where it just keeps getting
worse."
Ryan
Ritter was the top
finisher for the 49ers. He
finished tied for 21st finishing with a
respectable 2-under par in the three round
tournament, ten strokes behind the leader.
"I
was very pleased with how [Ritter] played,"
Livingstone said. "He would be the
first to tell you he played very poorly
in the first two tournaments. His
performance was very good."
This
year's team is young, with only two seniors
and Livingstone said that the strength of
the team will be its depth. In fact one
of the team's best golfers, redshirt freshman
Brett Lederer, one of only five 49ers golfers
to win the Long Beach Amatuer Championships,
was not one of the five golfers chosen to
compete in Fresno.
Livingstone
hopes to use the fact that the team will
have to compete among each other for the
chance to compete in tournaments as motivation
to improve each golfers play.
Colorado
State University, San Diego State and Brigham
Young University finished 1-2-3 respectively
in the team competition while Colorado State's
Nolan Martin finished first in individual
play with a 12-under par 204. Martin shot
4-under par 68 on each day of competition.
The
Beach will next be in action at the Cal
State Northridge Matador classic
Oct. 20-21.
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