By: Evan Roberts, Texas A&M Athletics Communications
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Texas A&M freshman Phichaksn Maichon holds a two-stroke lead at 6-under after the first two rounds of stroke play at the Southeastern Conference Men’s Golf Championship at Sea Island Golf Club.
The Bangkok native carded six birdies in Thursday’s round to finish with a 3-under 67. He leads a pack of six players that are tied for second at 4-under.
“Phichaksn has done a great job,” head coach Brian Kortan said. “He’s admittedly working hard to do it. He is scoring his golf ball really well. He is having a ton of fun. A lot of positive stuff coming from him.”
As a team, the 19th-ranked Aggies are in fourth at 6-under after shooting a 5-under 275 in round two. No. 3 Vanderbilt leads at 13-under while No. 16 Florida (-9), LSU (-8) and No. 14 Auburn (-4) round out the top five. No. 12 Georgia (-3) is in sixth and Missouri (-2) and Mississippi State (-1) are seventh and eighth, respectively.
“We have to play a great round of golf tomorrow. We weren’t very clean today,” Kortan added. “We made a few more mistakes. We will putt it a little better and be where we need to be. We have a veteran group. We have guys that have been here before, so I’m looking forward to them getting out here and competing. It’s never easy in this conference because it’s such a good conference. There are 10 top 25 teams. If you like competing, this is where you want to be.”
Sam Bennett shot up the leaderboard 25 spots as the Madisonville, Texas, native moved to even-par for the tournament with a 4-under 66 and is tied for 23rd. Bennett was bogey-free and registered birdies on Nos. 3, 6, 15 and 18.
Daniel Rodrigues is tied for 29th at 1-over and was even-par for the second round. William Paysse is tied for 41st at 3-over, and Walker Lee is tied for 48th at 4-over.
“It was good to see Sam bounce back as yesterday was kind of an off day for him,” Kortan said. “The other guys have all hung in there. Something that is really good for us is we are having five guys play and five guys are in the round really deep. I expect those guys to come out take care of their business tomorrow.”
The Aggies close out stroke play on Friday at 7:50 a.m. and are paired with Georgia and Auburn.