After competing last week in Mississippi, the Emory men’s golf team made their way to Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. to play in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division-III Fall Preview, their second tournament of the fall season. The Eagles just missed a top-10 finish, tying the University of Texas at Tyler for 11th out of 18 teams.
Huntingdon College (Ala.) finished first, followed by Wittenberg University (Ohio) and Guilford College (N.C.).
Emory started the tournament off strong, ending Sunday in third place overall. Three of the team’s golfers finished even par or better. Junior Keenan Hickton led the team on the day, tying for fourth place with a score of -3.
Hickton praised the team’s performance on day one.
“We did a lot of good things in the first round. When we played our best, we are as good as Huntington and all the better teams,” he said.
Monday did not go as smoothly as planned. The Eagles faltered, concluding the day with 30 more strokes than the previous day. The front ninewas littered with nine scores of double bogey or worse. The team rebounded slightly on the back nine, but it was insufficient to recover from their rough start to the day.
On Tuesday, the Eagles lost even more ground and fell out of the top 10. While their score improved from Monday, it was not enough for the Eagles to blaze back into the thick of the tournament.
Head Coach John Sjoberg noted the discrepancies in the team’s performance over the course of the tournament.
“There was a different golf course during rounds two and three,” Sjoberg said. “It was much more difficult. We just didn’t play as well. We weren’t sharp.”
Hickton shared Sjoberg’s disappointment with the second round.
“[The course] was a little bit longer and little bit harder,” Hickton said. “It only played two or three shots harder for the rest of the field. We probably played it six shots harder.”
In regard to the final round, Hickton expressed more optimism about the team’s performance.
“We could have easily shot the same score during the second round. That would’ve helped our finish a lot,” he said.
For the second consecutive tournament, Hickton was Emory’s top performer, finishing the tournament tied for 22nd at +9. Despite hitting one of Sunday’s best overall performances, Hickton dropped 12 strokes over the course of Monday and Tuesday. Finishing behind him were his teammates freshman Matt Organisak (+10), junior Sean Murphy (+15), sophomore Anthony Muscato II (+16) and sophomore Connor Yakubov (+17).
For upcoming competitions, Sjoberg will seek to use the fall preview to identify players’ weaknesses and strengths.
“We’ll have to figure out how to do better. Hopefully we can learn from this experience and continue to get better,” Sjoberg said.
Emory will have a week off before returning to action Monday, Oct. 3, in the Oglethorpe-Royal Lakes Fall Invitational at Royal Lakes Golf and Country Club in Flowery Branch, Ga.
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