Men's golf

Men’s golf heads out west for spring break tournament

Published Mar 9, 2013

The No. 9 ranked men’s golf team will begin its spring break trip in California.

Saturday, the Frogs have a dual match against the Pepperdine University Waves.

The Waves are coming off a season-best third place finish at their last tournament. Five Wave players made the top 20 in the North Ranch Intercollegiate tournament.

TCU head coach Bill Montigel said the match against Pepperdine would be strictly match play. Match play is how the NCAA tournament is formatted later on in the year.

Match play is a scoring system in which a player or team earns a point each hole they beat their opponent, rather than stroke play, where the number of strokes is counted.

Montigel said he thought it would be good practice and experience for his team, in case they found themselves in that position at the NCAA tournament.

Following the Pepperdine match play, the Frogs will travel south for the San Diego Classic held March 11-12 at San Diego Country Club.

TCU will once be the top-ranked squad of the 14-team tournament.

Other ranked teams in the tournament are No. 29 Texas Tech, No. 31 Missouri, No. 47 Arizona State and No. 49 Oregon State.

The Frogs swept the title at the Desert Intercollegiate two weeks ago. The team finished with a 25-stroke lead over the closest opposing team.

Sophomore Julien Brun took home the individual title to lead a group of five Frogs in the top 8 on the final leaderboard at the Desert tournament.

Montigel said the 25 shot victory was obviously nice, but there is still a lot of golf left to play this season.

“It was only one tournament and we still have a lot of tournaments to play,” Montigel said. “It gave the guys some confidence that if they work hard, good things can happen.”

The Frogs finish their spring break golf trip with the National Invitational Tournament in Tucson, Ariz., March 16 and 17.

“The nice thing about it is it’s during our spring break,” Montigel said. “We get to play a little match play against Pepperdine, then two tournaments and the kids don’t miss any school. So that’s going to be good.”