The entire Big Ten Conference traveled to the Hammock Beach Resort in sunny Palm Coast, Florida for the conference’s match play championship.
Match play, compared to the more common stroke play, keeps track of the player who has the lower score on each hole rather than all holes combined. The player who wins the hole gets one point.
In the first tournament of the spring season, the Spartans went an impressive 3-1 overall with wins against (10) Wisconsin, (12) Indiana, and (13) Rutgers. Their only loss came on Sunday in the first round of the championship bracket against (8) Purdue, putting them outside of championship contention.
Saturday morning, the team dropped four of their five matches against the Boilermakers. Charlie Netzel lost his match (2-up) against Enzo Perez. Jon Finely let his match slide with only one hole to play against Stuart McDonald. Mitch Rutledge dropped his match on the 14th hole after his opponent, Ben-Marvin Egel, went 5-up. Gareth Lappin lost to Purdue’s Austin Eoff (2-up). The only Spartan win of the day came from Sam Weatherhead, who went 2-up against Boilermaker Brian Carlson with one hole to play.
Later in the day, the team bounced back against Wisconsin. The Spartans, while not on top of their game, won four out of their five matches. Spartan wins came from Netzel, Weatherhead, Rutledge and Lappin. Finely lost his match against Jack Watson.
On Sunday, MSU won both games against Indiana and Rutgers. Overall, the team went 7-1-2 in all of their matches.
MSU head coach, Casey Lubahn, was pleased with his team’s performance.
“Sunday morning I thought we played very well, we just didn’t close very well,” Lubahn said. “Sunday afternoon against Wisconsin, I didn’t think we played as well, but closed better. In the last day, I thought we played well start to finish. Guys were locked in, comfortable and really controlled their matches the whole way.”
Sophomore Sam Weatherhead went undefeated and really excelled in Lubahn’s mind.
“He was playing with the flu virus. To walk 36 holes in two days and go undefeated was extremely impressive.”
Coach Lubahn, while happy, would’ve liked to see the team go further.
“Obviously we’d like to be in the main draw and make a run at the championship but it’s match play, anything can happen. I think it was more important that our guys started to lock in on their physical and mental queues that they’re going to need to follow starting this weekend as we’re getting into bigger stroke play events. I think we’re pleased and moving in the right direction; we got a good group.”
The Spartans will have to quickly look ahead to one of their most competitive tournaments of the year, in the Mobile Bay Intercollegiate tournament in Mobile, Alabama.
Michael Nyland is a multimedia journalist for Impact Sports
