The Bucs men’s golf team had a lot of success last season. They had multiple top 10 finishes and a few top-5 finishes. Some players returned with the Bucs, including Austin Carter, who showed a lot of potential, and Geuntae Kim, who played really well throughout the season last season.
This season they opened up at The Prestige at PGA West in California. Due to high winds, the tournament was set to start Tuesday. In the field teams such as Oregon, LSU, University of Southern California and more participated. The tournament was filled with 16 teams. Day one of the Bucs was pretty good as they finished top 10 with seven of the team ahead of them ranked in the country.
For the Bucs, Geuntae Kim (Daegu, South Korea) and freshman Jack Rhea (Jonesborough, Tennessee) both tied 17th place, shooting a round of 72 on day one of the tournament. Austin Carter (Kingsport, Tennessee), who was really good for the Bucs a season ago, finished 43rd with teammate sophomore Trevor Hulbert (Orlando, Florida).
Sam Triplett from Northwestern finished 1st place day one of the tournaments, shooting a 67 on the day, followed by Oregon’s Norman Xiong and Stanford’s Franklin Huang, who tied for second place with a score of 68.
Oregon and Oklahoma State tied for 1st place in the first round with Oklahoma State coming into the tournament ranked No.2 in the country.
For the Bucs to finish top 5, they would need a really good second round and for some of the teams ahead to have a bad day to secure a top-five finish.
On Wednesday, the Bucs came into the day tied with three teams with Southern California making a strong push to move into the 8th spot. The Bucs had some issues trending the other teams down and possibly move the opponent out of the top 10, while the teams at the top of the leaderboard set to start teeing off at 9:20 a.m.
