Over the weekend, the Hillsdale College golf team made a tour of southern California to escape the Michigan winter and start gearing up for the spring tournament season.
The Chargers played qualifying rounds at Jack Nicklaus Course at PGA West, the Stadium Course at PGA West, and La Quinta Golf Course in Palm Springs, California. The golfers welcomed the chance to play demanding courses that the pros played just last week.
“That was a really good start of the season,” senior George Roberts said. “Ah crickey, not being able to hit balls on grass for the last five months was obviously a challenge, but I think it was a necessary one.
“Because they played the tour event last week, the course was very demanding,” he said. “The greens were still rolling 12 on the stimp. They were rock-solid. It was brutal out there.”
In a sport played outdoors, the Chargers used the trip to acclimate to warm weather and work around the greens. Their indoor flight simulator back on campus can’t provide an alternative before the spring season kicks off at the St. Leo Invitational in Dade City, Florida on Feb. 22.
“It was good to knock the rust off before diving straight into Florida in three weeks. I think we all got exposed a little bit so it showed us where we need to improve if we want to succeed this season,” sophomore Josh Davenport said. “You can get away with a lot of stuff on the courses we normally play, whereas with these, anything that wasn’t perfect you were punished for.”
Head coach Matt Thompson said the unforgiving setups of the PGA West courses challenges golfers to be more accurate and methodical from tee to green.
“If you play tough courses, you start to get better and it makes everything seem easier,” Thompson said. “Hopefully our confidence level is still up and we learn from it so when we play the courses in the spring everything will seem a little bit easier.”