The Marquette men’s golf fall season was characterized by zero top-nine finishes and one top-10 finish. The highest finish of the season came at the first tournament of the fall, the Wolverine Intercollegiate, where Marquette placed 10th out of 11 teams.
Coach Steve Bailey said his team struggled with consistency from top to bottom, putting up too many big numbers and digging huge holes that couldn’t be overcome.
“We proved we could go out and make some birdies in tournaments, but it’s too hard to come back when you put up as many big numbers as we did,” Bailey said. “We showed good signs at times, but we weren’t able to close out rounds when we needed to.”
Bailey said the team’s finish was particularly disheartening given the effort in practice throughout the year. Bailey said he did not feel the results in tournaments matched Marquette’s work ethic.
“I think we worked too hard to be satisfied with mediocrity in our level of play,” Bailey said. “When you put in the amount of work we did each and every day, you obviously want to see yourself at the top of the leaderboard. I think we did a good job of showing up every day to practice, and we talk about focusing on our deficiencies and looking to get better every day.”
Sophomore Michael Motz had a good season individually as the team’s most consistent finisher, leading the Golden Eagles in three events and finishing second in the other two. Motz tied for second individually in the John Dallio Invitational on Oct. 9, and finished 11th at the SCVB Pacific Invitational last week.
Motz said individually, he felt better than he did after the fall season last year. But he felt the team as a whole was stuck in a rut all season.
“I think we did a good job going into each tournament with a fresh mindset, but we had guys fall into the same habits over and over again making poor mental decisions on the course and repeating their mistakes,” Motz said. “Mentally we didn’t put ourselves in good positions, and we particularly tried to do too much around the greens. It seemed like every round we left some shots out there, and I felt that there weren’t many times we were really satisfied with how we played.”
Matt Haase, Marquette’s only senior, saw the team’s youth as an added problem and said the Golden Eagles still have a lot of work to do despite some signs of potential.
“We had a young team, and our games weren’t up to our potential this year,” Haase said. “I think we have talent and had glimpses of good golf, but we didn’t play consistently. We made a lot of simple mistakes throughout the year, and we didn’t play smart golf to the percentages.”
This winter, Bailey said the Golden Eagles will work on the fundamentals relative to their swings and putting at the team’s indoor facility in the Marquette Gym, but most of the responsibility to improve will fall on his players.
“There’s going to be a month where they’re home alone, and they can’t just go and take a break for 30 days,” Bailey said. “We’re going to give them the framework, but it all depends on what each individual is willing to put in time and effort-wise to get better. Michael and (freshman) Will (Joiner) have the opportunity to go to their warm weather homes and practice outdoors, and I think for the most part the guys have some sort of facility to work on their games back home.”
