CARROLLTON, Texas – Maridoe Golf Club is no joke, and the Texans experienced that firsthand on Monday-Tuesday at the North Texas Intercollegiate, hosted by UNT.
Typical team round scores hovering around even or under-par were inflated in Carrollton, Texas, this week at the home of a pridefully tough course. The host Mean Green won at +29, and Tarleton State shook off a difficult first round to take fourth out of six teams at +43 (907 total, rounds of 313, 295, 299).
"Even though the finish doesn't show it, we played well in our last two rounds," head coach Chance Cain said. "We just finished so poorly in Round 1 that it was too far to overcome. This golf course is just so tough that it exposes everything and can't take one shot off or you're staring a double or worse in the face. The fight the team had in Round 2 though was pretty awesome. They showed some pride in that to go from the worst round to the best. We are definitely starting to learn more about composure and how to compete which helps in the long run. I'm looking forward to having a week of practice to try to clean up some of the mistakes we are making so we are ready for conference."
Tarleton likely would have had a better finish, but they lost their top performer of late,
Alvaro Huidobro, who withdrew due to injury on Tuesday. Huidobro was tied-11th entering the final round at +6 (76, 74).
Cristobal Sepulveda led Tarleton State with a top-10 finish, shooting +9 (78, 74, 73) for tied-eighth.
Max Bengtsson and
Carson Gallaher finished within a stroke of each other, with Bengtsson turning in at +13 (79, 72, 78) for tied-18th and Gallaher at +14 (80, 75, 75) for tied-22nd.
Bladen Samaniego took tied-30th at +17 (82, 78, 73) and
Chandler Barch shot +23 (78, 82, 79) for tied-37th.
Tarleton finished above the other two WAC programs in the field, UT Arlington and Stephen F. Austin. The Texans were first in both Par 3 (+5) and Par 5 (-10) scoring, but were last in Par 4 (+64) scoring. Tarleton had three of the top five individual leaders in Par 5 scoring, as Sepulveda and Bengtsson tied-first at -4, and Samaniego tied-third at -2. The Texans had the most birdies in the field with 34, led by Bengtsson (nine, tied-fourth).
This was Sepulveda's best spot on the individual leaderboard this season, besting his tied-25th season-opening performance. Bengtsson recorded his sixth top-20 tournament of the year.
The regular season has now concluded for the Texans. They'll turn their focus to the WAC Championship, which plays out April 26-28 at Chaparral Pines in Payson, Arizona.
