After shaky fall season, golf looks ahead to spring

With the fall season now behind them, the golf team is looking ahead to a spring season, which they hope will produce an appearance in NCAA tournament final.

After what Head Coach Matt Ball considered a poor start, the Rams closed the fall with one third place finish.

“I would have liked to have started better, they came back to school playing terrible after probably one of the best summers of individual competitive golf they’ve had,” Ball said. “They were really playing lousy but over the course of the semester they got better and better.”  

The Rams placed sixth, eighth, ninth and third in their respective tournaments this season. For seniors Steffan Harm and Adam Ball, the spring season is the last ride. Harm, who hails from Gerlingen, Germany, said he hopes the team can live up to the high aspirations the seniors have placed on them.

“Our goal this coming semester is to make it to the NCAA finals,” Harm said. “I think this year we probably have the best chance that we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

Coach Ball’s team began the season on Sept. 21 at the Janney VCU Shootout, a two-day weekend invitational in Richmond. At the shootout, they earned a sixth place finish behind champions James Madison University and runners-up East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Ball and Harm were the highest individual finishers from VCU at the 54-hole tournament. Ball, a Richmond native, finished 3-under with a score of 213 points, enough to tie for fifth place. Harm tied for 18th place by finishing 3-over with 219 points.

A week later, the team traveled more than 900 miles to Burlington, Iowa to compete in the Golfwater Conference Challenge, where 863 points saw the team finish in eighth place as the University of Iowa won the title. Ball fell two spots in the leaderboard on the final day to finish 5-under in a tie for 10th place as VCU’s highest ranked finisher. VCU’s second highest finisher, Junior Jamie Clare, was 4-under which tied for 13th place.

The Rams’ next test, at the Bank of Tennessee at Blackthorn, had two opponents finish the fall season in the national rankings, No. 17 Pennsylvania State University and No. 24 University of Virginia. The tournament was held in Jonesborough, Tennessee on Oct. 11. Ball and Harm led the way for VCU, tying for 17th and 27th respectively to earn the team a 9th place finish. Penn State took home the trophy at the invitational while U.Va., the highest ranked team in Virginia, finished fourth.

The Rams saw their best tournament finish of the fall at the Elon Phoenix Invitational in Burlington, North Carolina. The Rams finished 9-over in third place, watching on as ECU took home the prize, finishing 19-under and well above the competition.

The Bridgestone Golf Collegiate was VCU’s final fall tournament, the team finished in 6th place in Greensboro, North Carolina as No. 22 Purdue University and No. 16 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finished first and second respectively. The Rams finished 5-over with 869 points. Harm led the way for VCU finishing 1-under with 215 points while Clare and Ball also finished in the top 20.

The Rams open the spring season on Feb. 22 in the Atlantic 10 Match Play Championship in Florida.

Staff Writer, Fadel Allassan

Fadel is a sophomore print journalism major. He is fluent in English and French and enjoys writing about politics. // Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

allassanfg@commonwealthtimes.org