After a solid start to on the first day, a top-notch field and prevailing winds blew the ASU men’s golf team off course at the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational.
The Sun Devils finished 14th out of 15 teams in what might be the toughest tournament they play this fall. Starting three freshmen did not help much as the youth and inexperience played into the hands of what ASU head coach Tim Mickelson called a “US Open-style course.”
One of the bright spots was the play of lone senior Spencer Fletcher, who had the best finish of his career, tied for seventh. Another positive was the talent shown by some of the younger players.
Freshman Austin Quick stormed out of the gate shooting a 2-over-par 72 in the first round. Also, freshman Mathias Schjoelberg finished tied for 33rd being the only Sun Devil other than Fletcher to shoot even par or less in one of his rounds.
Both however couldn’t keep the momentum going and fell victim to the unusually long course.
“For a freshman to shoot even out there is pretty good,” Mickelson said, “I saw them try hard every single shot. Nobody gave up. A couple of the players were just a bit overmatched by the golf course.”
The biggest problem for the Sun Devils was the team’s play around the green.
“Our short game definitely has to get back better,” Mickelson said. “I mean, we are chipping it to 12 or 15 feet when we should be chipping it to three or six feet and you just can’t make as many 15 footers as you are going to make six footers. It’s just sort of the laws of golf.”
It’s clear that Fletcher is going to have to be the leader for the team with junior Jin Song backing him up. The two players are the only upperclassman Mickelson has in his arsenal. While the future looks bright with seven freshman — including redshirt-freshman Wes Strange on the team — in order for this team to win now they are going to have to get big contributions from unlikely sources.
Despite all this, Mickelson is trying to keep away from judging his team this early.
“I’m trying not to have expectations on the team yet because I don’t know what we are capable of, because we are so young,” he said. “I’m just learning what talent they have or don’t have. Each player is going to be different with what they can bring to the table,” Mickelson said, “(I expected) Jin and Spencer being able to play solid, and that’s what happened.”
Song, who was the only player to improve his score on a windy second round, finished tied for 44th. However, the end result didn’t really represent how consistently Song played, as he and Fletcher were the only Sun Devils to not record anything worse than a bogey in their rounds.
Pac-12 juggernaut Stanford was clearly the class of a field that included 10 of the top 20 teams in the country. The Cardinals laid down a beating, finishing ahead of top ten opponents Auburn and Oklahoma State by 16 strokes. On the flip side No. 7 Duke finished just four strokes ahead of the Sun Devils in 13th place.
“We are trying to compare ourselves with the elite teams in the country,” Mickelson said. “So every time we lose we are going to focus on how far away from winning we were. We expect to be at the top. We know we are going to get there, but I also know it’s going to take time to groom these young guys.”
“All we are focusing on is what we need to do to is close the gap of how many shots we lost by.”
Reach the reporter at jjmckelv@asu.edu
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