The Texas A&M men’s golf team performed well in their first tournament of the 2015 season. Their score of 864 (+24) after the three rounds of the Fighting Illini Invitational tied them with Alabama for sixth out of 15 teams.

Florida State shot one stroke under par on Sunday to grab the invitation championship.

“I was really impressed with the way we played and handled adversity today,” Texas A&M head coach J.T. Higgins said after the second round on Saturday, via 12thman.com. “The other thing I really liked was that it was a complete team effort. All five guys were in it without having any terrible scores. They kept it around par and did a really nice job.”

Senior Andrew Lister led the Aggies on the weekend, finishing with a score of 216 (+6). He shot an even 70 on both Friday and Sunday, but struggled to the tune of a 76 on Saturday.

However, the weather was certainly a contributing factor to Saturday’s struggles. It was rainy and windy all weekend, which hurt the scores across the board. But Higgins said he was impressed with how his players overcame the unfavorable conditions.

“It was tough conditions, there was about two and half of inches of rain last night so the course was really wet,” Higgins said. “It played really long and it was windy out there, so the course was as tough as you could see it but the guys handled it well. We had one of the better rounds of the day and moved up the leaderboard a little bit, closing the gap on the tournament leaders.”

Sophomore Cameron Champ was the Aggies’ most consistent golfer, posting scores of 73, 71 and 73, respectively. He converted 16 pars and one birdie in the wet conditions on Saturday, which helped him move up the leaderboard.

Senior Adria Arnaus also turned in a strong Saturday performance, as his 71 catapulted him 12 spots up the leaderboard, all the way to 12th place. His final score was 218 (+8), which tied him with freshman Chandler Phillips for third place among Aggies.

After all the scores were totaled, A&M had the third-lowest round on Saturday.

Senior Ben Crancer entered the clubhouse on Sunday with a 221 (+11), and Max Miller – who played the tournament as an individual so his score did not go into the Aggies’ official ranking – finished with a 225.
The A&M men’s team will resume competition next weekend when they travel to Valentine, Nebraska to take on ‘The Jackrabbit’ tournament.