The Hillsdale golf team traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to play in the Saginaw Valley State University Spring Invitational at the Kearney Hill Golf Links over the weekend. It placed 10th with a team score of 589, 19 strokes off the winning 570 shot by the host team, SVSU.
Senior Liam Purslowe started strong with a four-under 68 on Friday and finished the tournament with a three-under 141, his career low over 36 holes. The low finish was an exciting takeaway from the tournament, but it didn’t come as a surprise to his teammates.
“He can go low like that every week,” sophomore Sutton Dunwoodie said. “A lot of guys on the team can. It’s just nice to see someone do it.”
For Purslowe, it was important to get a quick start in the first event of the spring.
“Only being three back of the leader and having a career-low 36-hole tournament was a real confidence boost for the spring,” Purslowe said. “I hit the ball solid, but I just didn’t make the putts that I needed to in the second round to have a chance of winning.”
The Chargers followed in order: junior Andy Grayson (+3), senior Joe Torres (+5), senior Steve Sartore (+10), and sophomore Sutton Dunwoodie (+11). Despite the overall finish, the team took away several positives as they gear up for a tournament next Monday and Tuesday back in Kentucky.
“I feel confident about what we need to achieve as a team in the coming weeks,” Purslowe said. “The guys have been working hard and hopefully that hard work will be reflected in our scores.”
Torres said he sees room for improvement, hoping to see a strong bounce back after an underwhelming opening.
“Forthe next tournament, we’ve been preparing all week and are going a day earlier to better prepare. We’re feeling very confident with our team. Having played the course last year, we have some experience here. It’s very important for us to have a good showing this week, which would most likely be a top 3 finish,” Torres said.
Purslowe will be missing the next tournament, so most of the scoring burden will be spread to the other members.
“It will be exciting to see how the team progresses. Without Liam, we’ll have different guys stepping up, and it will be interesting to see who goes low this week,” Dunwoodie said. “The course will be a lot harder. I think it’s a better course than the one we played at last week, so it should be a good challenge.”