The Ball State Women’s Golf team place eighth out of 12 teams, shooting an 898 total through three rounds at the Falcon Flordia Classic.
The Ball State’s five-person lineup consisted of junior Kiah Parrott, freshman Sarah Gallagher, freshman Jasmine Driscoll, freshman Madelin Boyd and graduate student Peyton Broce.
The Cardinals were at the Lakewood Ranch Golf and Country Club in Lakewood Rance, Florida.
“The golf course was in great condition and we had absolutely perfect weather for both days in the tournament,” head coach Cameron Andry said. “It's a golf course that has wide fairways and big green and so it benefits players that can bomb it out there because you're not going to get in a lot of trouble even if you hit it a little bit offline. So it's all about getting it as close to the green as possible, and then at that point, it's who can wedge it and putt it the best.”
Monday - Round One
Ball State teed off at 8:30 a.m. for the first round, two leaders in that round were Parrott and Boyd. Both of them shot a 3-over-par score of 75 in their first round. Parrott had 13 pars in her round, and Boyd had 12.
The other three players would be close behind though. Driscoll and Broce were both at 4-over-par, and Gallagher was at 5-over-par.
“I think that I would have liked to have seen maybe our top two or three players get into red numbers because I think it was certainly out there on that golf course,” Andry said. “You could shoot under par if you got it going. We had a couple of players, it seems like every round we had one or two that were in red numbers for a portion of the round and that a few mistakes here or there a bogey or a double would kind of derail things. Anytime you can have five players that are pretty consistently breaking 75, that's pretty good.”
Monday - Round Two
The second round saw many of the same scores as the first round.
Leading Ball State was Driscoll, who shot a 2-over-par 74. She had only two pars on her back nine, having four birdies and three bogeys.
Gallagher and Boyd both shot a 3-over-par 75, Boyd’s second time with that score.
Broce and Parrott were the highest of the round and shot 4-over-par 76. The scores from the first round closely mirrored the second round of the day.
“I just thought we weren't quite as sharp as we needed to be with the distance wedging and with the putter,” Andry said. “Making some putts, those are things that are a little harder sometimes to work on during the winter like the distance wedging. You can hit it into a screen or off a mat, but it's hard to do that until you're actually out on the golf course and practicing it, and kind of the same deal with putting, especially when you go down to Bermuda greens, it's a little bit different. It took us a little while to make some adjustments there.”
Tuesday - Round Three
Round three would see improvements from the majority of the Cardinals, and as a team, they dropped four strokes from round two.
Driscoll shot a team-best even-par 72 followed closely by Parrott with a 1-over-par 73. Both of them had three birdies in their final round.
Gallagher shot a 3-over-par 75, Broce posted a 4-over-par 76 and Boyd shot a score of 5-over-par 77.
“When you're thinking about that golf course, it was it was definitely scorable, Andry said. “Something around even par or even under par was definitely achievable. We didn't quite take advantage of it like we needed to.
Andry now has about half of his first season at Ball State under his belt. He says that each day the team continues to get better each day, he also said he is excited to be able to work with recent Athletic Director hire, Jeff Mitchell.
The Cardinals will be in Arizona next at the WMU [Western Michigan University] Rio Verde Invitational at the Rio Verde Country Club. Andry said he is looking forward to competing with a strong field and also getting the chance to battle some Mid-American Conference (MAC) teams.
“I'm hoping that we're going to get the chance to practice outside a little bit more and the weather's looking pretty favorable for the next few days to be able to do that,” Andry said. “We're going to work on to really continue to drill in the distance wedging and putting, really with putting it's speed control, but it's also central work. Just to get really comfortable make sure you're hitting your lines on the shorter putts and so we'll do those two things. You get a little more bang for your buck when you're doing that outside. Hopefully, we can keep it going.”
Contact Elijah Poe with comments at elijah.poe@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ElijahPoe4.
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