Despite showing considerable progress in prior tournaments, the Texas A&M men’s golf team took a step backward at this week’s Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters hosted by the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
After finishes of ninth, sixth and fourth in their last three events, the Aggies regressed to a thirteenth place finish out of 15 teams this week, shooting a cumulative score of +17 (881), only two strokes ahead of last place finisher, Georgia.
However, the field for this week’s event was one of the most competitive that A&M had been a part of in its 2014-15 campaign, with ten of the fifteen teams ranked inside the top 25. However, that excuse does not sit well with Aggie head coach J.T. Higgins.
“We’re never going to be happy with a 13th-place finish in any field, no matter how tough it is,” Higgins said. “It goes without saying that we are pretty disappointed in the showing…There are some signs of life but we’ve got to get better at taking care of our business and valuing shots to compete at this level.”
The No. 4 Texas Longhorns ran away with the victory on the team leaderboard, shooting a cumulative score of -26 (838), defeating second place by 10 strokes and placing 43 strokes between themselves and A&M.
Scottie Scheffler, Kramer Hickok, and Beau Hossler all recorded top ten finishes for the Longhorns. Hossler, a sophomore whose -9 (207) placed him in a tie for second place at the Collegiate Masters, notably recorded a top 30 finish at the 2012 U.S. Open where he competed as an amateur.
Robbie Shelton, from the University of Alabama, won the individual event by 6 strokes, carding rounds of 67, 69 and 65 to post a final score of -15.
Ben Crancer was the highest ranked Aggie on the individual leaderboard, shooting -1 on the last day to finish at even par for the tournament and into a tie for 30th place. No other Aggies finished inside the top 40.
The road to recovering lost momentum starts Sunday for Higgins and his squad when they tee it in Naples, Florida for the Talis Park Challenge running March 15-16.
“I think that we have the makings of a really solid team,” Higgins said. “If we can make it to postseason I think we’re going to surprise some people. However, we’re not going to get there unless we do a better job of cherishing our shots and not giving them away.