Junior Jon Rahm Rodriguez watches to see if his putt will find the whole during the ASU Thunderbird Invitational on April 7, 2013. Rahm Rodriguez led the Sun Devils with a score of -1. (Photo by Murphy Bannerman)Both the men’s and women’s golf teams finished their fall schedules in Hawaii this week with varying levels of success as the women's team tied for fifth in its highest finish of the season and the men's team placed second.
For the women at the Nanea Pac-12 Preview, the story was sophomore Monica Vaughn, who led the team for the tournament by shooting even over the three rounds.
Vauhgn’s third and final round was not only her best of the tournament but also the best single-round performance so far in her collegiate career at 6-under par. She had the only score under par on the team in any round of the tournament.
Vaughn recorded 15 birdies over the three rounds and eagled on the 18th hole in the final round. She finished tied for 7th in the event which is by far her best finish so far this season and is her fifth career top-10 finish.
Vaughn had a good showing at last year’s Pac-12 Preview in Hawaii as well when she finished tied for third in the event at 6-under. Her best round last year was also the third and final where she shot a then-career low 69.
The women's team recorded its highest finish of the fall, tied for fifth with a total score of 16-over par. The Washington Huskies won the event with a score of 11-under par.
Senior Noemi Jimenez was the only other Sun Devil to finish in the top-20 with her score of 5-over. Freshman Sophia Zeeb finished 6-over par but eagled on the 4th hole (par-4) in the last round.
The finish and final score are both highs for the fall tournaments but are still far from where they hope to be at the end of the season. The team now heads into a three-month layoff before they resume action in February.
While the women's Pac-12 Preview was being played on the big island of Hawaii, the men’s team was playing the Warrior Princeville Makai Invitational on the island of Kauai.
The golf course there is prime for extremely low scores and the teams in the tournament took full advantage. Georgia Tech took the event with a score of 55-under par, with the Sun Devils finishing second at 40-under par.
After the event coach Tim Mickelson spoke about the level of difficulty the Makai Golf Club presented.
“It was the easiest golf course we saw this fall,” Mickelson said. “But there’s still enough trouble, in the sense that there’s four or five holes that if you hit a bad shot you can hit the water or out of bounds.”
Other than freshman Tobias Eden, who still recorded a more than respectable 2-over par, every Sun Devil in the event finished under par. Junior Jon Rahm led the group at 15-under and finishing tied for fifth. Rahm birdied 15 times and eagled once in the first round and again in the final round.
Perhaps the more impressive performance for the men though came from sophomore Nicolo Galletti who finished tied for sixth at 14-under par in his first competition of the season. Galletti, who birdied 15 times, had just one bogey in the entire tournament.
“He missed about a six-foot put for par (on the sixth hole of the last round) and besides that, that was his only blemish on the scorecard,” Mickelson said.
The men’s team will now be taking a break until the end of January when it beings the spring schedule in Tucson for the Arizona Intercollegiate.
Over the source of the fall, the men's team finished in the top-10 of every tournament and ended on a three-tournament streak of second place finishes.
“Overall, I’m certainly pleased with how we played,” Mickelson said. “I’m pleased that we got multiple guys in the lineup, I think almost everybody at this point on out team got in the lineup. It shows that we have a very deep team, which is going to be very beneficial come springtime.”
You can reach the reporter at wslane@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @bill_slane
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