Bobcats bring home National Golf Invitational Championship

The Bobcats were hungry following a rough last day at the Sun Belt Conference Championships which saw Texas State fall from a top five spot all the way down to 8th place.

Unsatisfied with their finish, sophomore Jack Burke said he knew his team was much better than what their performance showed.

“As a team, we were disappointed with how the last round of conference went,” Burke said. “We felt that we were a regional team. We knew we were good enough to win that tournament and the coach preached it all week. He told us to do what we do best and sure enough we all pulled together as a team.”

Junior Marcelo Garza agreed.

“We played really badly on the last day of the conference,” Garza said. “We all thought our season was over but then we got the opportunity to play in this tournament. We all wanted to prove that the last day of the conference was just a bad round and we wanted to show everyone what we are capable of.”

But then the Bobcats were giving a lifeline, as Texas State was invited to the inaugural National Golf Invitational in Marcopa, Arizona, at the Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club.

The opportunity was one that Texas State ran with, as the Bobcats rallied to win the NGI and bring home the championship trophy with a team overall score of -7.

Though Head Coach Shane Howell was extremely proud of his team for winning the championship– their third overall this season, being able to play one more time this season was equally important.

“I was happy that the guys got one more opportunity to play together,” Howell said. “They had a great year winning two tournaments prior to this one. We battled a lot of injuries with three of our top six guys dealing with an injury at some point during the season. It was great to get a postseason bid like this and have a chance to play one more together. For them to get the victory was even sweeter.”

Organized by Lance Ringler of Golf Week, Howell said he was all too familiar with the NGI.

“Lance Ringler had been trying to get this tournament off the ground for over 10 years,” Howell said. “The NCAA kinda stonewalled him a little bit but he thought this was going to get passed prior to COVID. Then when COVID hit, everything went on the backburner. Earlier in the fall, I got a call from him saying the NCAA passed it and he quickly put it together at the Coaches Convention in December.

Just as the Bobcats were starting the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, Howell received an email from Ringler that the Bobcats had a chance to play in the tournament.

“About a week before the conference tournament, I got an email from him,” Howell said. “He talked about that even though we were in conference, he wanted to put this on our radar that we had a chance to be invited to this tournament, so let’s stay in touch and see what happens.”

For the players, an opportunity like that was something they wanted to leap at.

“For us, we didn’t want to go into next season with that last round of conference still on our minds,” Burke said. “The big thing was re-establishing that we can win as a team.”

“Even though this wasn’t the postseason tournament that we wanted, this is still a postseason tournament at the end of the day,” Garza said. “This could prepare us for next season and hopefully regionals.”

As the Bobcats prepped for the tournament, Burke went over what the Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club looked like.

“Overall, the course layout was great,” Burke said. “It was very fair. Obviously they made the greens a little more firm on the last day. You had to go out there and think your way around the golf course instead of just hitting and hoping. You had to understand that scoring 18 pars on that golf course is a really good score on that course instead of trying to force things and make things happen. If you did that, you end up getting in a hurry out there with the greens being firm. Then you had to have a sharp short game to maneuver out there. But as long as you can hit the fairways, you have many opportunities.”

As the team went over the course during their prep work, the Bobcats started to develop a strategy.

“It was very important to have certain angles to some of the pins,” Garza said. “We had a good practice round to build a strategy for us. It was really important for us to maintain that strategy throughout the three rounds.”

The strategy worked out as Garza ended up tied for fifth place while Burke tied for 21st place.

Freshman Sakke Siltala tied for 7th pace while junior Kasper Nyland tied for 27th place. Junior Tom Roed Karlson finished tied for 43rd place.

Placing in the top five, Garza said he was feeling himself again.

“I was hitting the ball pretty good,” Garza said. “I was putting myself in the position where I would at worst make a bogey. It was about being patient and waiting on the easy holes to come in. So it was making some birdies and making pars all around. Because we stood by our strategy, the course turned out to be much easier than it could have been.”

cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtomBMc