University of New Mexico Men’s Golf
Up Next: Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate
Dates: March 29-31
Course: Bulls Bay Golf Club (par-72, 7,282 yards), Awendaw, S.C.
Participating teams: No. 4 Auburn, No. 7 South Carolina, No. 21 Wake Forest, No. 25 New Mexico, No. 26 Virginia, No. 41 Duke, No. 46 North Carolina State, Charleston Southern, College of Charleston, Coastal Carolina, GRU Augusta, Kentucky, Missouri, Winthrop, Wisconsin
Lobos in the field: Andrej Bevins, Gavin Green, Gustavo Morantes, Sam Saunders, Sean Romero
Live scoring: Golfstat.com
The 25th-ranked University of New Mexico men’s golf team learned two important lessons in its last event.
The Lobos are capable of playing excellent golf.
But they need to play excellent golf for three rounds to make inroads on a national scale.
UNM sat at 14 under par with a 12-stroke lead over Washington heading into the final round of the San Diego Classic on March 10, only to shoot a 13-over 301 while the Huskies shot 8-under 280 for a 21-stroke swing.
The Lobos finished third behind Washington and North Carolina, putting a damper on their spring break experience.
“We just got off to a terrible start, and the momentum just really got away from us,” Lobo coach Glen Millican said. “When you competing against Top-25 programs like Washington and North Carolina, if you play bad, you’re going to get beat and we played bad in the final round.”
The silver lining for New Mexico is that the team now has experience of what it’s like to play with the lead as it heads to its next event, the Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate in Awendaw, S.C. from Sunday-Tuesday. The 15-team field includes seven ranked teams, with No. 4 Auburn and No. 7 South Carolina headlining the event.
For the Lobos, it’s just another opportunity to compete and work themselves toward the postseason coming up in May, starting with the Mountain West Championship.
“This is why we try to approach every tournament the same way,” Millican said. “There are so many variables in golf, and a lot of them are beyond your control, so you just try to create a routine in your approach that gives you a blueprint to go by in all the events.”
Even battle-tested senior Gavin Green shot a 4-over during the final round in San Diego after he had seven-stroke lead after 36 holes. The No. 10 collegiate player in the Golfweek.com/Sagarin rankings finished tied for fourth in the final individual standings.
“I hope it’ll be a learning experience for everyone involved,” Millican said. “It was definitely not the way we wanted to end the tournament. We just have to figure out how to get better from it. That one stung because we thought we had it and then we gave it away.”
UNM is making its first-ever appearance in the event Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate, which will feature 18 holes of golf each day from Sunday-Tuesday.
“It’s a chance for us to see some new teams in the East that we haven’t seen yet,” Millican said. “It’ll be good for our players to learn to adapt to a course they’ve never played before.”
UNM finished second in two of its last three events of the spring (and finishing third in the other) and has the potential to keep placing well in its second-to-last regular season event. After the Hootie at Bulls Bay, the Lobos will travel directly from South Carolina to Georgia to play in the 3M Augusta Invitational April 4-5.