After two rounds of action at the Gary Koch Invitational on the par 72, 7,042-yard Gaston Country Club course in Gaston, North Carolina on Monday, the K-State men’s golf team find themselves near the bottom of the team leaderboard with one round to go.
Currently, the Wildcats sit in 11th place with a score of 27-over-par 603 after carding scores of 301 and 302 in the first two rounds. Only four schools managed to finish under par on the first day. No. 1 Florida State currently leads the field by nine strokes over second place No. 13 Auburn.
“The greens were very firm and fast; it is something we are not used to and we did not adjust very well,” K-State head coach Grant Robbins said to K-State Sports. “When the course is set up like this, it is imperative that you keep the ball below the hole and avoid short-side misses, and we did a very poor job of that today.”
Individually, K-State redshirt sophomore Matt Green leads the Wildcats after shooting a 73 and 75 in his first two rounds to finish four-over par and tied for 28th place. Fellow sophomores Connor Knabe and Seth Smith followed suit with five-over and six-over par scores, respectively.
Redshirt sophomore Hank Simpson and freshman Trent Evans rounded out Robbin’s lineup. Simpson’s day was an uphill battle after carding an eight-over par first round. He managed to limit the damage in round two to finish 12-over par.
Evans, meanwhile, was consistent with two eight-over par rounds, but that finish was only good enough for a 16-over par, 76th-place spot on the leaderboard.
“For us to be successful, we have to do the little things right and when we do not it is a little frustrating,” Robbins said. “We just need to manage our game better and we can have a good bounce back round tomorrow.”
The Gary Koch Invitational will wrap up today with the final 18 holes beginning at 8 a.m.
