By Herb Page
Head Men's Golf Coach
Director of Golf
We just finished what is my 37th qualifier here at Kent State, and we some great scores.
Taylor Pendrith shot 62 and tied his own course record at Windmill Lakes on Friday. Jake Troyer opened with 65-66. At the end of the week, guess who won the qualifier? Corey Conners, who is coming off a great junior year and a fantastic summer run as an amateur that included reaching the semifinals at the U.S. Amateur.
There was a lot of tension on the last day of the qualifier. Some spots were available. I was very pleased to see our new freshman Josh Whalen shoot 69 on the last day. That's 1-under-par on the round and under a lot of pressure when he started the day three-shots back to get that fifth spot for his first tournament. He went out and won that spot, and we are very proud of him.
It's good to see our guys handle that kind of pressure already. In a lot of ways, these qualifiers are as pressure filled as some of the actual tournaments we'll be playing in during the year.
The lineup for this week at the Gopher Invitational in Minnesota is Conners at 12-under for the 72-hole qualifier, Pendrith at 10-under, Troyer at 5-under, Nick Scott at 3-over and Whalen at 8-over. Those are the five spots for the first road trip.
We've been doing this four-day qualifier through Labor Day for 15-to-20 years now. Our record in that time was set by John Hahn, who shot 17-under-par for four rounds at Windmill, which is just phenomenal. Corey and Taylor were trying to chase that this weekend but didn't quite get there.
Overall, we are very excited to get started in the 2013-14 season.
The team has got to develop a character, and we don't know exactly what that will be yet. We know we have the No. 1 and 2 players in the Canadian rankings in Corey and Taylor. They are both top-30 in the world rankings, and they are both in the top-50 NCAA players to watch list. It's a given with Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners that we have two of the absolute top players in the NCAA.
But the character of this team will be determined by who is going to take that three, four and five spot. In college golf, you are only as good as your fifth man.
We were also really excited to see several of our alums do well last week on the Canadian PGA Tour at the Wildfire Invitational. We had four guys make the cut, Mackenzie Hughes finished tied for second at 18-under. Danny Sahl was tied for 14th at 11-under. Ryan Yip tied for 35th at 7-under and Jon Mills tied for 53rd at 1-under. David Markle missed the cut by just one shot.
On the eGolf Tour, John Hahn finished 10th last week at the MidPines Classic, shooting 10-under. So, we have a lot of guys out there on the tours playing very well, and that is very exciting.
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