Like some Marquette students, the men’s golf team will be heading down to Florida during spring break. But the team is not heading to Panama City to lay out on the beach and put off an upcoming history exam. Rather, it’s going to work.
The Golden Eagles will be competing in the Rio Pinar Invitational next Monday and Tuesday in Orlando as they look to bounce back in their second invitational of the spring season after a disappointing 19th place finish at the USF Ron Smith Invitational last weekend.
“It’s a nice trip,” senior Mike McDonald said. “As a team we always look forward to the Spring Break trips. It’s a little more relaxed. … It kind of gives us a chance to get the season started and get a lot of good practice in.”
Marquette heads to Florida for the second time this season. Florida could almost be a home-away-from-home for the Golden Eagles who will play in the Sunshine State four times this season. But according to junior Kelly Kretz, Florida courses are not the same as the ones in the Midwest.
“Even though we go down there a lot it’s just a different style of golf courses than we have up here,” Kretz said. “There’s more hazards and it’s a little tighter. The biggest thing going down there is the greens. The grass is just tighter.”
But the courses aren’t the only obstacles the team will have to overcome. Unlike a typical three-day tournament, this invitational is only two days, the only one of its kind in the season. But McDonald believes his squad is up to the challenge.
“It always is a grind,” he said. “That first 18, you know you’re going to be playing all the same holes again in the afternoon, so sometimes if you get off to a good start it becomes a lot of note-taking. Really it’s a matter of staying focused and not losing too many shots early on.”
The team has never played an event at the Rio Pinar Country Club, but sophomore Matt Haase said he will utilize the early walk-through and practice rounds to get a good feel when match day arrives.
“We’re all kind of used to seeing new courses and figuring out how to play them,” he said. “So it’s normal.”
The opposition will be tough, especially with teams that have the ability to practice and hone their games year-round like Florida Atlantic, Southern Florida, Texas-Arlington and Southern Mississippi. But Haase knows that golf is all about focusing on yourself, not your opposition.
“It’s much better to think about yourself and the course,” he said. “It’s a battle against yourself and the difficulty of the course.”
McDonald said he hopes to really improve after a personally disappointing outing last week and will look to clean up what he called his “sloppy play.”
“Sometimes it’s to be expected coming off the break, but it still hurts nonetheless when you leave shots out there carelessly,” McDonald said. “I’m just trying to get back into it, like the wedge shots and shots that you really haven’t been able to hit over the winter break and just getting back into that tournament mode.”