Golf continues to struggle this season

Twaddle had the team's top performance, tying for 31st.

By Catherine Crane

Published Oct. 10, 2006

With a sub-par performance this weekend, the Missouri men's golf team again finished at the bottom of the heap, forcing great importance on its next and final tournament of the fall season.

The team has continually struggled this season, finishing well in only one tournament. This weekend wasn't an exception to the Tigers' slump.

After high hopes for the season and lots of talent, the team took ninth place out of ten teams at this weekend's Wolf Run Intercollegiate, in Zionsville, Ind.

"We played poorly, another bad performance," coach Mark Leroux said.

Part of the struggle is caused by the team's challenging schedule.

Leroux said he purposely chose a hard schedule for his team, matching it up against some of the top teams in the country and playing at some of the hardest golf courses.

"You try to schedule the best tournaments you can," Leroux said. "You always want to play in the strongest fields you can, and play against the best teams in the country. In doing that, we have scheduled what have been four really difficult golf courses. The average scores (of the field) are high at each of these events."

Sophomore Peter Malnati is happy that his coach has given the team a tough schedule.

"That's where we want to be," Malnati said. "We want to be on tough courses playing tough teams. I don't want to go play in an easy tournament just because we've been playing badly."

A high note of this weekend's tournament was senior Trent Twaddle's surprise performance.

Twaddle was the team's top finisher, tying for 31st place, though he isn't usually the star of the team.

This weekend, he finished the first round of golf shooting 70, which tied him for the third lowest score in the field on that round.

"It felt good to finally play well," Twaddle said. "It was my first under-par round in a college tournament, which felt good."

Despite his first round, Twaddle was not able to continue his success, finishing the tournament with scores of 80 and 82, for a total of 232, 19 over par.

Senior John Kelly's performance, which tied him for 34th place, with teammates Malnati, and senior Shawn Jasper, was disappointing to him. Kelly is usually one of MU's top finishers but struggled in this tournament.

"I made too many big numbers," Kelly said. "I made seven doubles and one triple bogey. I have to find a way to minimize my big mistakes."

Malnati, who is also usually one of the team's top finishers, scored well on the first two rounds, carding a 75 and 74, both below the field's average.

But he struggled on the last round, scoring 84 and taking four strokes on one shot in the weeds before he could finally get the ball out of the rough.

The team isn't satisfied with its ninth-place finish and is still looking for its first big win.

"We're not satisfied with that," Twaddle said. "We're going to keep working. Golf's a funny sport where it can turn around at any point for any team. If everybody saves a couple shots every round, that's a big change in score."

A win now counts more than ever, after MU's repeated struggles.

"We just have to make sure we keep our heads up," Kelly said. "We need to realize that we're all good players, and we'll turn it around eventually."