The phrase, “It's not how many times you get knocked down; it's how many times you get back up,” is more than applicable to the ASU men’s golf team.
After the fall months, the Sun Devils held a record of 29-26-1. But after four tournaments in the spring, the team’s record has slipped to 43-66-1.
Average round scores for many ASU golfers are worse in the spring compared to the fall. Senior Spencer Fletcher shot a 71.4 per round in the fall, but his spring average has risen to 76.67 per round.
Freshman Stan Gautier’s single-round average is six strokes higher this spring, junior Jin Song’s nearly three and freshman Mathias Schjoelberg’s is just over two.
ASU coach Tim Mickelson doesn’t believe anything has changed from the two parts of the season, though. He said the team’s lower scores were indicative of playing on tougher golf courses, and the team’s record a byproduct of a tougher strength of schedule.
That strength of schedule is steadily rising and is the 14th toughest schedule in the country, according to Golfweek.
“Part of it is we’ve played tougher tournaments, so our schedule in general is tougher,” Mickelson said. “We’ve been playing much more difficult golf courses. We were able to not be exposed much in the fall because we were playing easier golf courses, which allowed us to make a mistake and still recover.”
The team looks to recover when it resumes play in the GCAA Match Play Championship on March 18-20 in Sarasota, Fla.
Match play consists of a different format than tournaments ASU has competed in earlier this year.
Earlier in the season, the Sun Devils competed in stroke play, which scores the team on a summation of its golfers’ scores from the three rounds.
In stroke play, schools compete against the entire field at the same time, while match play squares two schools off head-to-head.
“Crazy things happen in match play it seems like, so I think it’s a benefit for us to play match play,” Mickelson said. “But since we’re probably going to be the 14-seed, we’re going to be playing one of the best teams in the country first round.”
A school’s top golfer will face off against its opponent’s top golfer, its second golfer against the other, and so forth. The winner gets one point, and the first team to three points wins the match.
Because of this format, ASU will only play a few schools this invitational. It will be difficult for ASU to make up any ground to return to a .500 record.
“The chances of us having a record at the end of the year over .500 is still possible, but the only way we’re going to get there is if we play better than we’ve played all year,” Mickelson said. “We need to see better results than any other tournament we’ve played. Whether or not we can turn things around that fast, it’s definitely a question mark.”
Reach the reporter at jmjanss1@asu.edu
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