Men’s golf finishes third in West Virginia, anxious for more

The Wichita State men’s golf team took third place at the Joe Faeganes Marshall Invitational in West Virginia on Wednesday.

Junior Grant Bennett led the Shockers with a six-under par 67-69-71-207 overall score, tying Bennett for 8th place. Bennett’s scores also set a career-best score by stroke and tied his best career low round score. This was the 10th time Bennett has finished in the top 10 of a tournament.

Assistant coach Tony Blake says the tournament was OK.

“We played alright,” he said. “The guys understand there’s more potential. I would give it a C+ rating.”

Despite having room for improvement, Blake said the tournament went the way they thought it would for the first tournament of the season.

After the Shockers returned from West Virginia, they were back on the courses to practice for the upcoming Ram Masters Invitational in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“Today was a good day at practice,” Blake said. “The guys were more anxious than defeated.”

Blake said the team needs to work on what he calls the “turnovers” of golf: unforced errors. Blake considers unforced errors as things like three-putts, wedge misses or even knowing iron-club distances.

Blake said the team is working on everything it needs to, but there’s no definite way to prepare for the course at Fort Collins Country Club.

“It’s a tough course,” Blake said. “It’s going to play a lot different, over half a club different. We’ll quickly have to make mental calculations and cope with the lightening-fast greens.”

The Shockers are scheduled to tee off Monday in Fort Collins

Live scoring can be found on Golfstats.com.