Men's golf hopes for better season in spring
The spring season holds more importance.
Published Nov. 10, 2006
When summing up MU men's fall golf season, coach Mark Leroux quoted Harvey Penick: "The only thing I think is wrong is their scores are too high."
Before the season began, things were shaping up nicely — senior John Kelly and sophomore Peter Malnati were participating in the U.S. Amateur, in which Kelly finished as runner-up. But the fall season played out about as badly as anyone could have expected.
The team's highest finish in the fall was fourth at the Wolverine Intercollegiate, but even then, the team wasn't satisfied and was looking to do bigger and better things in the future.
Leroux said he doesn't have anything specific for his team to work on other than improving its all-around game.
"These guys know their game inside and out, so I haven't laid out what they need to do," Leroux said. "I've never really been an on-course stats guy for the guys, I think it's obvious what they need to work on."
The team will continue strength-training and conditioning, work on its putting, chipping and pitching and spend some time indoors to work on driving the ball.
Despite these early struggles and some frustration, the team is quick to reassure that the season is not over, and good things are to come for MU golf.
"In golf, it's easy to start over," Leroux said. "It's real easy to start a new round and think you're going to play well the next round. This is another one of those times where you can start over, break from the fall, [and say] 'OK, that's behind us, and start over in the spring.'"
Malnati said he was not pleased with the team's performance in the fall and is now looking to the spring.
"My goal for the spring is to play good and beat people because we should," Malnati said. "We can and we should."
Despite disappointment with a fall season that he missed most of because of injury, senior Shawn Jasper said he isn't ready to quit.
"It's there. We've done it before," Jasper said. "John made it to the U.S. Am, we made it to nationals my sophomore year, so we've done it. We've just got to figure out what we did then and implement it back here now."
Jasper also pinpointed some things the team needs to work on while observing their play from the sidelines while injured.
"We just don't keep it in play enough," he said. "We hit a lot of foul balls. When you're not in play, it's just hard to score."
In the past, the team has struggled in the fall but finished with a good spring. The spring season also has more tournaments than the fall season and holds more importance. In February, the team will be in Orlando, Fla., for the first match of the spring season with its first chance to put the fall season behind it.
"Momentum is funny like that," Malnati said. "If we can get it going the other way, it could be a whole different story in the spring."