By Jordan Morey
Staff Writer
The golf team snapped consecutive last-place finishes with a fifth-place finish in a field of 10 at the Manor Intercollegiate in Farmville, Va., hosted by Longwood last Saturday, concluding the regular season.
The Atlantic 10 Championship will take place at Heron Bay Golf Club in Coral Springs, Fla., April 27-29.
In the league’s pre-championship poll conducted by A-10 coaches, the Charlotte 49ers, the reigning conference champions, were picked to finish first. The 49ers earned seven first-place votes, tallying 97 points. Xavier received one first-place vote, and received 86 total votes, well enough for second.
St. Bonaventure is predicted to finish eighth of 11, the same place it finished in last year’s tournament.
First-year coach John Powers will coach in the first A-10 Championship of his career.
“The only team we have played this spring from the A-10 is George Washington,” Powers said. “We hung in with them the final 35 holes in the last tournament, but they beat us pretty bad the first round.”
Last year, the Bonnies finished their first round of the A-10 Championship in 10th place, shooting 330, two strokes ahead of La Salle.
The Bonnies played considerably better the next two rounds, finishing with scores of 307 and 319, to finish three shots behind seventh-place Fordham.
Charlotte reclaimed the A-10 title for the sixth consecutive time in 2011 and also placed seventh of 11 at the NCAA Central Regional, two spots short of making its fourth NCAA Championship. The 49ers finished the A-10 Championship with a three-day total of 881, five shots ahead of Xavier and six ahead of Richmond.
Last weekend, senior Kevin Lewis led the Bonnies, finishing with a three-round score of 218, placing fifth overall, the lowest for the Bonnies since playing in the Cornell Invitational last September.
The Bonnies concluded the tournament at Longwood with rounds of 305, 302 and 304. Junior Brian McKenna finished just behind Lewis with a three-round total of 223.
“I think I am playing the best golf of my career,” Lewis said. “I have a lot of confidence going into this weekend; my mental game has been the best it has ever been. I really think that if we put together a good couple of rounds, there is no reason to not finish in the top five. It really comes down to how we play; anyone can win any given day.”
Lewis did most of his damage on the par-5 holes, finishing those at 6-under.
“I made sure that it was to a comfortable yardage and trusted my wedge game from about 100 yards,” Lewis said.
Powers said he believes his team is where it wants to be for the A-10 Championship and believes in the schedule he put together.
“This spring, we played a lot of good teams — teams better than us — by choice,” Powers said. “I could have loaded the schedule up with air; we could have been going into the A-10 Championship looking like things are going great and had a rude awakening in the conference tournament.”
moreyja10@bonaventure.edu
