By Jess Westendorf
The Iowa men’s golf team will compete in its last tournament of the fall season in Dallas today in the Royal Oaks Intercollegiate.
The schedule has 36 holes scheduled for today, with tee time set for 8:30 a.m. The final round will tee off Tuesday at 8:15 a.m. and will consist of 18 holes.
Royal Oaks Country Club was built in 1969 and has since become a prime course in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The course is a par 71 and stretches 7,068 yards.
There will be 11 teams competing today and Tuesday, including Iowa. Among them is Baylor, ranked No. 21 in the coaches’ poll.
The Royal Oaks Intercollegiate will use a six-man lineup and use six players for the individual tournament.
Senior Raymond Knoll will be in the No. 1 spot in the Hawkeyes lineup, followed by sophomore Matthew Walker and freshman Alex Schaake. Rounding out the lineup will be junior Sam Meuret, senior Carson Schaake, and freshman Ryoto Furuya.
Last week at the Paintbrush Invitational, Alex Schaake led the Hawkeyes and completed the first top-20 finish of his career. He jumped 23 spots on the leader board in the third round to tie for 18th place. It was the second time this fall that Schaake made the lineup.
Leaving Colorado last week, the team was still unhappy with its short game and missing opportunities to keep the score low.
“I need to work on my short game still,” Alex Schaake said. “I had five or six 3-putts in Colorado, and that was just too many. I probably would have made the top 10 if I’d had zero, so there is always something to work on going into the next tournament.”
Looking forward to this tournament and this course, the team wanted to focus not only on putting but putting on faster greens. In Colorado, the team struggled and did not capitalize.
Royal Oaks will have the same features and give the Hawkeyes a chance to keep the scores low.
“The greens were a little different from what we were used to putting on,” Carson Schaake said. “They were really fast, and [Royal Oaks] will be pretty similar to that so we have been trying to practice on different faster greens. I think it is a great idea, and we will be ready to go for next week.”
Even with all the time spent on the team’s short game, head coach Tyler Stith and his team are confident going into Dallas.
“These last few tournaments, we have not played up to our expectations, but we are motivated to change that,” Stith said. “We want to go into our off-season with momentum for the spring, so we are all just anxious to compete again and have our best tournament of the fall season.”
