SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Assistant
The Waves are struggling. The Pepperdine men’s golf team finished poorly last week in Arizona. And again, the Waves played disappointingly this week in Texas, finishing the 18-team tournament in 17th place.
Despite a solid start of the 2006 campaign, No.-20 Pepperdine is having difficulty maintaining momentum. After finishing the first two tournaments of this year T-9th and first, the Waves finished last in last week’s National Invitation Tournament in Tuscon, Ariz., and second from the bottom at this week’s Morris Williams Intercollegiate in Austin, Texas, at the 906-yard Austin Country Club.
“We didn’t obviously play very well,” Head Coach John Geiberger said. “But it was a great venue and a great field, and a really good old course.”
Geiberger said the team struggled last week because sophomore Colin Wilcox withdrew from the tournament after the first round.
“In Tuscon, we primarily played with four guys because Colin was sick,” he said.
One team usually has five golfers play in a college tournament and takes the best four scores to compete with other teams. Therefore, if one player is out from a team, all the other player’s scores have to count no matter how bad they are. Wilcox shot a score of 75 during the first round in NIT, but withdrew without finishing the second and third rounds.
“And this week, we mixed up the line up a little bit,” Geiberger said. “Basically you need at least three guys to play decent, but we only had two guys.”
The two players who played well were senior Alex Coe and junior J.J. Wood, who shot a 5-over 221 and a 7-over 223 at the par-72, 6,906-yard Austin Country Club, respectively.
The rest of the team struggled when sophomore Michael Baird, freshman Adam Porzak and sophomore Jesse Barnsley finished the tournament with a 231, 232 and 236, respectively.
This week’s Morris Williams was this season’s last regular season tournament. Starting April 17, the Waves will compete against other schools in their conference for the WCC Championship.
As the head coach of the WCC champions for the past eight years, Geiberger said their goal is to win it and make it to the NCAA regional.
“Obviously for the conference,” he said, “we’d love to keep our winning streak alive.”
Despite the disappointing results in recent tournaments, Geiberger sounded confident about the upcoming event.
“The ironic thing is that we play exceptionally well each of those years,” he said.
After the conference, the regional is waiting.
“Obviously at the regional, you have to play well to advance to the national,” he said. “We have to play well – we can’t play mediocre out there.”
04-06-2006
