After the first round, BGSU’s men’s golf team was in third place but could not finish strong enough to stay there. The team ended the Rutherford Intercollegiate tournament in Happy Valley, Penn. in 12th place.

The first rounds of the past few tournaments have been tough for the team and have had high scores that pretty much leave them out of the competition for the rest of the tournament. This past weekend, however, the team was right up there with the competition and played a good first round.

“If we’re going to bring something positive, we finally had ourselves in the tournament,” BG coach Garry Winger said. “After that first round, we could have won it if we had, obviously, played better.”

Winger was happy that the team played so well in the first round but said, “Now that we’ve made a step in that direction, we have to figure out how to put three rounds together,” he said.

BG had to battle rain and cooler weather on the first day of the tournament and Winger said that it was a hard, long day for everyone.

Even though the weather was a factor against the team, Jace Walker, sophomore, said that the team as whole should have played better.

“That last round. I just don’t know what happened,” Walker said. “There are no excuses.”

Walker finished 14th in the tournament out of 83 players but said his scores should have been lower. In the second round, his score of 72 was the lowest for BG this weekend.

“I had a good second round and then I just played poorly in the last round,” Walker said. “As a team, we could have beat some really good teams and maybe we just tried too hard to make a move.”

“Jace played pretty good and he’s stepped up this spring and really all year,” Winger said. “The last couple weeks he’s played well.”

Winger added that all the players cannot play poorly in the same round and that’s what he sees is happening.

“We need other guys to step up and it’s got to be up to the individuals to get themselves ready to play,” Winger said.

In the final round of the tournament, BG went into it one shot behind the host, Penn State and Winger said it was upsetting to see the team playing at the same level as them and then fall back.

“We had a chance to be pretty good and we handled it pretty poorly,” Winger added. “We need to build on momentum and beat some MAC schools this weekend.

“They are very capable of doing it and it’s very disappointing to see five talented players that are underachieving right now.”

Top finish and BG finish at rutherford Intercollegiate:

Placement-team: 1 – Eastern Michigan finished with a total of 892 12 – BGSU 921

placement-individual: 1 – Korey Mahoney – EMU 68, 73, 74 14 – Jace Walker – BGSU 78, 72, 75