Men's Golf: April showers leave Princeton stuck in rough

“The first day was probably the most miserable day of golf,” junior Jake Skinner said. “It was 50 degrees and raining with 40-mile-an-hour winds.”

“That, combined with 36 holes was pretty intense,” he added. “We didn’t play very well, but it was our first tournament of the spring, and it was a good start for us. We have our home invitational this weekend, so the tournament let us know where we were at and what we needed to improve on this week.”

Princeton dug an early hole for itself during the first day of competition, finishing the first two rounds of competition 11 shots behind 15th-place Wright State. Senior Drew Maliniak posted the high second-round score of the tournament for the men’s golf team with a three-over-par 74. Maliniak is also a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

The second round was the most successful round of golf of the weekend for the team. The team shot a combined 303 — 14 shots better than its next best round.

“We thought we were going to do all right,” Skinner said. “We weren’t really sure what to expect. In past years, the tournament has been pretty rainy, and the course gets pretty soggy and wet. We were hopeful that we would play all right. We just struggled out there a little bit.”

On the second day of competition, Princeton posted a team score of 317 in the third round and finished the tournament 89 strokes behind first-place Illinois. Though the end result was not what the Tigers had hoped for, they gleaned some valuable experience from the weekend.

“It’s not that we played terrible, but it’s our first tournament,” Skinner said. “I’m glad that we had a first tournament on a harder course in tough conditions. It makes everything easy going forward.”

“It’s tough playing golf at Princeton in the winter and then moving to a course with faster greens and tougher conditions,” he added.

The challenge of playing in ugly early-spring conditions should help the Tigers down the road. It also gave the team something to build on — a barometer that had been missing since the fall season ended in October.

“We tried to improve on what we were doing each day,” Skinner explained. “We showed our toughness over the weekend. We’re probably never going to see conditions like that again. It’s a positive that we started the season and got things going.”

Maliniak led Tigers at +19 for the tournament, and junior Greg Stamas finished two shots behind. Skinner, junior Juan Pablo Candela and sophomore Eric Salazar also got in three solid rounds in preparation for the team’s next tournament, the Princeton Invitational.

“It gets us excited for this weekend, where we’re a favorite to win our home tournament,” Skinner said. “I think it’s good for us, because going forward the weather is going to be fine and it shows our team that we can play in those conditions. It’s really good for our mental toughness.”