On Tuesday, Sept. 7, Texas A&M golf wrapped up its stay at Erin Hills in Hartford, Wisc., for the Marquette Intercollegiate tournament. After starting in third place, the Aggies took care of business on the final day of the tournament to secure first place.
The maroon and white finished the first day of the tournament 6-under par, which was four strokes behind South Florida and seven strokes behind Purdue.
On day two of the tournament, the Aggies inched closer to the top, finishing one stroke ahead of South Florida and nine strokes ahead of Purdue. This spark moved the Aggies into second place, just four strokes behind USF.
On the tournament’s final day, A&M finished seven strokes ahead of South Florida to secure the four-stroke team victory.
A&M also earned the individual victory, as senior Walker Lee opened his season with a strong performance, topping Tennessee State freshman Mats Ege by one stroke. Lee finished second overall in birdies with 17, six of which came on the final day of competition. Following the tournament, Lee was proud of his victory, but also took time to commend the rest of the team.
“It’s awesome to start off the year with a team win as well as an individual win,” Lee said. “It was awesome to see the younger guys embrace the pressure and play great golf when we needed them. I was proud of the way I hung in there after the first 27 holes, as that was some of the best golf I’ve ever played. I was able to minimize the big mistakes and get a couple of putts to drop coming down the stretch to win.”
Other Aggies had impressive showings during the week. Senior Sam Bennett and freshman Michael Heidelbaugh tied for 12th place for A&M, and freshman Phichaksn Maichon tied for 22nd place.
Following the victory, first year A&M head coach Brian Kortan acknowledged the difficulty of competing with such lofty competition and praised his team for coming out on top.
“Today was awesome, and you couldn’t have asked for a better way to start the season,” Kortan said. “The guys were really good this week. To win a golf tournament at a great course like that against a lot of quality teams, you have to do a lot of things right, and we did.”