Playing the Course
The Providence Christian men's golf team wrapped up their fall season with another solid performance at the PCH Invitational at Quail Lodge Golf Club in Carmel, CA. The Sea Beggars have played well this fall, with the exception of their first round of each event. That first round has been the obstacle to otherwise contending and winning every outing. This group continues getting close, and each event has shown a drop in the team score for round one, which puts Providence closer to closing out an event for the program's first team win.
The Sea Beggars leading scorer was again Nick Chavez, who backed up his previous event win with a 2nd place showing, just four strokes shy of producing back-to-back tournament wins. His 148 total was also just four strokes better than the top 10 performance of fellow Sea Beggar Trey Kirschner (FR) who posted a final score of 152. Kirschner moved up the leaderboard six spots on the final round with his 75. Also making a huge comeback and leap up the leaderboard was Marc Lengtat (SR/Corning, CA) who closed out the event with a final round 75, due in large part to a hot putter in which only 25 puts were needed. Not showing up on the front page of the news would be Hayden Hughes (SO/Bakersfield, CA)' grit on day two. While Hayden was not having his best stuff, he grinded out a meaningful 78 to help move the team position up from 5th to 4th overall. Hughes managed to close out his round on day two finishing the final six holes at even par. Chavez was asked if he tracks how the competition is doing during a match and he said, "The only time we may ever want to see what others are doing is when we know we are close to the top and we may be a few strokes behind them. We then may have to play a little more aggressive so that we can gain more ground on them faster. If we are behind them by a little bit and we know it and there are not too many holes left, we may need to change our game plan so that we can gain ground on our opponents.
When asked how the rainy weather impacted the teams play, Marc Lengtat said, "Bad weather is going to happen, but it affects the whole field so everyone must deal with it; it is just a matter of how you deal with it. Weather is something you can't control, so just prepare for it and control the things you can control." He added, "In golf you will hit bad golf shots; in fact, you will hit more bad shots than great shots. The famous golfer Ben Hogan once said this, "Golf is a game of misses, he who misses the best, wins." You can hit 3 bad shots and hit 1 good shot on a hole and still make par. But for those bad shots, memory loss is your friend because if you let that one shot affect you, it could affect the rest of the hole, and then it can affect the next hole. Good golfers don't allow for this to happen. Being able to move past a bad hole or shot is very important in golf. Golf is a game of 6 inches, and it is between your ears. If your mental game is poor, golf is a hard game."
Coach Bowers said, "We have played the middle part of our tournaments very well this fall. In our team meetings we have talked about how we can open and close those same events a touch better so we can walk away tournament champions. I saw a step forward again this event as the guys looked much more ready on that first tee. On day two we played the final three holes much better as well – Progress! I am very excited and optimistic about our spring season to come."
The men's team will return to action this spring as they begin Cal Pac Conference play with high hopes of advancing to the postseason championships.
Chavez: 75, 73 for 2nd, Kirschner: 77, 75 for T10th, Lengtat: 81, 75 for 19th, Hughes: 79, 78 for T20th, and Stauffer 80,85 for T31.