A blistering second round score of 275 helped the BYU men’s golf team to a 15th place finish at the 2002 Ping-Arizona Intercollegiate tournament which ended Tues., Feb. 5, in Tucson.
The event was the first outing of the spring season for the Cougars.
“Our guys haven’t played much the last two months and that’s always a factor the first couple tournaments in the spring,” said coach Bruce Brockbank, according to a news release. “This was a real challenging course with narrow fairways. If you miss one shot, you’re out in the desert.”
Fresno State won the team competition with a 4-under-par performance over the three-round tournament.
BYU was in 12th place entering the final round of competition but struggled and fell 26 shots behind the Bulldogs.
BYU All-American Manuel Merizalde, currently ranked 30th individually by the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings, was the Cougars’ top scorer and was tied for 10th place after the second round.
Brockbank was able to find positives in his young team’s play.
“This was a very good field to go against,” he said. “It was nice to see our young guys step up and perform well against tough competition.”
BYU’s next tournament will be the John H. Burns Intercollegiate in Hawaii.
“We’ve got three weeks to get ready for our Hawaii tournament, so hopefully we can get the guys going and playing more consistent golf,” Brockbank said.
