Sept. 14, 2014
Live Stats/Tee Times BURLINGTON, Iowa (SMU) - SMU junior
Austin Smotherman carded a 4-under 68 to help place SMU third on the leaderboard after the first round at the GolfWeek Conference Challenge in Burlington, Iowa, on Sunday.
Smotherman tallied four birdies between holes 8-12 to temporarily propel him to the individual lead. Smotherman then went even par over the last six holes to maintain his score. Sophomore
Alex Higgs recorded three consecutive birdies from holes 8-10 to move into the top five overall, but a late double-bogey on the 17th hole dropped him down to 1-over. Freshman
Ben Baxter turned in an even-par 72 with two birdies and two bogeys on the day. Sophomore
Andrew Buchanan gave SMU its fourth counting score with a 2-over 74.
"I would say overall, after everyone got in their groove, we played pretty well today," head coach
Jason Enloe said. "I was really happy with the way the kids played in the middle of the round and I was proud of how focused they were. They all did their job and for the most part played well."
Another SMU freshman,
Gray Townsend, shot 9-over in his first collegiate round, but Enloe has confidence that the talented newcomer will rebound tomorrow.
"Gray kind of struggled today, but I expect for him to turn it around and play really well the next two days," Enloe said.
No. 9 LSU (10-under) leads the tournament by eight strokes over host Iowa (2-under) and nine shots over SMU (1-under). Eastern Michigan (5-over) and San Jose State (6-over) round out the top five in the 12-team season-opening tournament.
SMU will begin round two tomorrow at 9:50 a.m. on hole 1, grouped with LSU and Iowa. Live scores and pairings are available
here.
