By Cristian Reyna
Men’s golf team placed second at the LVC Spring Invitational at Lebanon Country Club on March 25.
Tanner Leonard and Will Kujawa both shot a 72. Kujawa had a one-stroke lead heading into the 17th hole but ended up matching Leonard and tying overall.
They each lead the way throughout the tournament for the rest of the team.
The preparation for this meet was simple despite it being a group who had not played together before.
“We played five different players at McDaniel [on March 23 and 24], and we played five more at this second one for their first tournament of the spring,” head coach Thomas Chatfield said.
As the head coach of both the men’s and women’s teams, Chatfield was confident in this selection of players to compete.
“We did a lot of talking about the golf course and where were good places to miss and where you need to be cautious,” Chatfield said.
Chatfield wanted to create a solid plan that the players could use to handle the adversity that they’d face.
“The biggest hole throughout the back nine was eleven and it was a pretty difficult hole, but both of them were able to hit really good 3-woods, and laid up on the green,” Chatfield said.
Throughout the tournament there wasn’t any live scoring, so the Blazers weren’t able to see where they were in terms of strokes.
Despite this, they were still able to put up good numbers.
“My mindset going in was just to stay consistent with my process and go about things the right way,” Leonard said. “I tried not to force anything, and I think I did that really well in the front nine, and I bounced back on the back nine to make even par.”
The graduate student used his experience to help pace him throughout the day.
As for Kujawa, he used this tournament as a baseline to measure where he was to start the year.
“I had no expectations going into it and wanted to see how my swing was feeling,” Kujawa said.
Confident in his ability, he was playing decently until holes ten and eleven. Stumbling over a tough hole, Kujawa was able to gain back control of his round and settled with a three-putt that kept him even.
“The story of my back nine was I was trying to make stuff happen instead of letting it happen,” Kujawa said.
Content with his baseline, Kujawa will use this as motivation to potentially surpass this score in his next tournament.
The Blazers are looking forward to attending the MAC Preview Tournament in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania on April 14.
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