After a sixth-place finish in its first spring event of the season, the No. 49 Texas A&M men’s golf team now takes its 2015 campaign to Lihue, Hawaii, for the John A. Burns Intercollegiate event, hosted by the University of Hawaii, running Wednesday through Friday.
Texas A&M is one of 16 teams in the event, of which five are nationally ranked inside the top 50, including the four-time defending tournament champion No. 23 University of California. Texas A&M recorded a second-place finish in last year’s edition, nine strokes behind California.
The Aggies, despite a slow start to the fall portion of their season, who suffered setbacks due to player injury and academic ineligibility, have already achieved a higher finish in their one spring tournament — Feb. 2 at the Sea Best Invitational — than they did in the entire fall.
Junior Adrià Arnaus said he sees the improvement, but a complete team effort will be required for their progress to continue.
“Everybody has worked a lot this last Christmas,” Arnaus said. “We came back and this first tournament, there has been an improvement. That’s all we look for and hopefully, right now, in Hawaii, we keep moving up. It’s got to be a little bit from everybody, you know. It cannot be one or two because it’s four of the ones that count. And hopefully, if we do that right and everyone is putting his own part, then at the end of the season we will be at nationals and putting for the championship.”
The 6,991-yard, par-72 Wailua municipal golf course plays host to the event.