Sept. 14, 2010

Sam Hall Intercollegiate Results

HATTIESBURG - Louisiana Tech head golf coach Jeff Parks summed up his entire team's mood following their first tournament of the fall with one short sentence.

"We are pretty pleased, and we are pretty disappointed," Parks said Tuesday while driving his team back from a fourth-place finish at the Sam Hall Intercollegiate at Hattiesburg Country Club. "We are excited about the finish, but we wish we could have just finished off a couple of holes.

"We just got beat by a couple of putts here and a couple of putts there. A couple went in for the other teams, and some of ours didn't. That's the game we play; a game of inches. We were one shot out of third and two shots out of second. When we are talking about more than 840 strokes over the course of the event, that's a pretty fine line."

Parks mentality shows the progress this program has made in recent years. Although the Bulldogs best 10 of the 15 teams in the event - Tech tied with Mississippi State for fourth place - , they didn't accomplish what they ultimately set out to do and that was capture the team title.

"We are pleased with fact we know we can compete at that level," Parks said. "We know we can win and that gives us a lot of confidence going into next week. To start the season off this way is rewarding because these guys put in a lot of time and effort and got some results. It was a learning experience although that's an understatement and a little bit of a cliché, but that is what it was."

Tech, which is coming off a year where it earned it first Top 100 ranking in almost two decades, got strong play from some of its veterans during the 54-hole event on Monday and Tuesday including senior Clinton Shepard (68-74-69=211, T12th) and Junior Cody Santone (74-68-73=215, T28th).

However, a couple of underclassmen also stole the show. True freshman Jack Lempke (67-73-73=213, T20th) tied his personal best with a 67 in his first collegiate round while sophomore Sam Forgan (71-67-70=208, T5th) recorded the best finish of his young career with three strong rounds.

"There were some good scores at this tournament and we had some of them," Parks said. "We played in the last group today with the leaders and that was a great opportunity to get taste of it. We didn't take a full bite of it yet, but we got a taste."

Kennesaw State won the event with a team total of 13-under-par 839 followed by UL-Lafayette (843), Southeastern Louisiana (845), Tech (846), Mississippi State (846), UL-Monroe (852), Arkansas State (853), Memphis (854), Southern Miss (854), Wichita State (856), UALR (864), Winthrop (876), Rice (878), South Alabama (878) and Troy (887).

Kennesaw State's Jeff Karlsson won the individual competition with a 14-under-par 199.

The Bulldogs return to action next weekend when they travel to Arlington for the UTA Waterchase Invitational.