By Nick Austin – Spear Reporter | Photo via SJSU Athletics
SJSU men’s golf improved its team performance this past weekend after placing seventh in the first tournament of the season.
The team finished in fourth place this past weekend but hovered around second and third place on the first two days of the tournament.
SJSU shot 291 (+3) as a team on Saturday and finished the day in third place.
Junior Ivan Barahona highlighted day one as he shot three-under-par.
“One of our guys, Ivan Barahona, really played great today by getting in position quite often,” head coach John Kennaday said in a video posted to the SJSU athletics website.
In the individual event, junior Alaric Mercie De Soultrait finished round one shooting a 69 and finished the day in third place.
Day two for the Spartans went well as they moved into second place in the team event shooting 10 under par (278) in round two and seven under for the combined score of the first two rounds.
“Today we did a lot better with our processes and getting in position throughout the day,” Kennaday said. “Tomorrow we gotta continue the trend with our process and getting in position and maybe we’ll come back with a little piece of hardware.”
Mercie finished day two of the tournament with a 69 and remained in third place in the individual event.
The final day of the tournament saw the Spartans slide down the leaderboard two places with a day three score of 294 (+6) and finish in fourth place with an overall tournament score of 863 (-1).
“Didn’t quite get the result we were looking for but we got a lot of good lessons,” Kennaday said. “We’re looking forward to getting home and working on what we learned this week.”
Zubair Firdaus led the Spartans’ team event as he shot a 70 (-2) and Mercie finished second in the individual event as he shot a 71 (-1) on the final day of the tournament.
SJSU’s next tournament is scheduled for Oct. 7-8 at the Alister Mackenzie Invitational in Fairfax, CA.
