Team ties for 4th at Hyatt Tournament

Golfers say players "drive for show and putt for dough."\nIf that is the case, the No. 35 IU men's golf team came home to Bloomington with empty pockets after finishing fourth in the Hyatt Plantation Intercollegiate Tournament in Puerto Rico this week.\n"We hit the ball well enough to win," said IU coach Mike Mayer. "We just could not put the ball into the hole when we got near the greens, and that hurt us."\nThe Hoosiers shot a 13-over 877 to finish in a fourth-place tie with the University of Southern Mississippi. The University of Kentucky took home the championship, beating the Hoosiers by 26 shots by shooting a 13-under 851 during the three-day event.\nThe opening round of the spring season was the best for the Hoosiers, shooting a four-under 284. However, the short game eluded the Hoosiers during the last two days of competition as they posted scores of 297 and 296.\nSenior Jeff Overton began his final collegiate season with another top-five finish, finishing in a fifth-place tie with a score of three-under 213, seven shots behind medalist Aron Price of Georgia Southern. Like his fellow teammates, Overton was unable to perform around the greens, which hurt his score.\n"I didn't get much out of the course this week," Overton said. "Emotionally I wasn't on the right level."\nSenior Heath Peters and junior Brad Marek both carded scores of four-over 220 for the tournament. Freshman Santiago Quitarle scored 10-over 226. Junior Scott Seibert rounded out the scoring for the Hoosiers with a score of 11-over 227.\n"We came out rusty this week," Marek said. "However, we are practicing hard, and we hope to head down to Phoenix and put ourselves into a position to win a golf tournament."\nThe Hoosiers will look to build off this week's performance next Tuesday when they head to Phoenix to compete in the Pioneer Classic. The field they will face will not be as challenging as the one that participated in Puerto Rico, but the Hoosiers will face a much larger field when they head to the southwest. However, finally dusting off the winter rust is a relief to the team.\n"Now that we got the first tournament under our belt, the edge is gone," Mayer said. "Kentucky came out and played bad in their first tournaments, and now they came and won this week. We will look to do the same sort of thing."\nAs long as the Hoosiers have good course management around the greens, the season looks bright as the team looks for Big Ten and NCAA championships.\n"We learned a lot about ourselves this week," Mayer said. "We are going to build on this week and get better as a team."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Chris Engel at ccengel@indiana.edu.