Aggies in 12th after NCAA Championship Day #1

ATLANTA  The Texas A&M men’s golf team began its run at the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship on Tuesday, finishing the event’s opening round in a tie for 12th place.

“I thought that the course was there for the taking this morning and while we didn’t play bad, we probably let a pretty good opportunity to post a low number slip away,” Texas A&M head coach J.T. Higgins said. “The guys played really solid but we didn’t convert on the par 5’s and we put ourselves in some bad positions that led to some bogies with unforced errors. I feel like we are right in the mix and where we need to be, we just need to play well the next two days.”

The Aggies (285, +5) are five-over par after 18 holes to share 12th place with fellow SEC squad LSU (285, +5).

Meanwhile, Arizona State (270, -10) leads the field at Capital City Club’s Crabapple Course while Georgia Tech (274, -6), Alabama (275, -5), Illinois (276, -4), California (277, -3), Oklahoma (278, -2), Texas (279, -1) and Oklahoma State (279, -1) round out the top eight teams on the leaderboard.

Following the conclusion of Thursday’s third round, the top eight teams in the standings will be seeded 1 through 8 by order of finish in stroke play, and will face off in a bracket-style match play tournament with one round set for each day. The final championship pairing is scheduled for Sunday, June 2.

Sophomore Ty Dunlap (69, -1) stood out as the Aggies’ top performer on Tuesday, firing a one-under par 69 to end the day with a share of 20th place. The Westlake, Texas, native was steady during his round, recording just one bogie on the day while carding birdies on No. 5 and No. 14.

Junior Johannes Veerman (71, +1) sits in a tie for 49th place after finishing his opening round with a one-over par 71, while senior Cameron Peck (72, +2) holds a share of 66th place.

Rounding out the Aggie contingency were sophomore Greg Yates (73, +3) and senior Drew Evans (74, +4), who ended Tuesday in ties for 95th and 113th, respectively.

During Wednesday’s second round Texas A&M will be paired alongside South Carolina and Saint Mary’s and is set to begin teeing off from the No. 1 tee box at 11:40 a.m. (CT).

“Tomorrow we’re looking to do the same things we talked about before today’s round,” Higgins added. “We need to play the par 5’s better, miss in the right spots and keep the ball in play off the tee. Those are the three keys that we’re trying to execute. For the most part we did a good job of that today, but we didn’t always miss in the right place and that led to some bogies.”

Live results can be found at www.ncaa.com/content/di-mens-golf-leaderboard and NCAA.com will have live streaming of the event beginning with the final round of stroke play on Thursday.

Story courtesy of Texas A&M Athletics

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