Golf team starts promising, ends flat

By Andrew Wituszynski

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

When Nate Barbee, Dakota Dunes, S.D., junior, shot a 73 in the first round Monday at the Herb Wimberly Intercollegiate, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone. His best score in his career here at Kansas is a 67, and when he shot a 64 in the second round Monday, even he said it was a little bit of a surprise.

His score of 64 is tied for the third lowest score in the Kansas Big 12 era of golf.

“I struggled in the morning a little, but came out strong in the afternoon,” Barbee said.

That he did. Barbee chalked up six birdies and an eagle in the second round alone, earning an eighth place tie individually. Barbee is sitting at five under par and just three strokes off of the first place lead.

“A 64 is tough to shoot on any day, but I would love to come out and shoot something low tomorrow,” Barbee said. “Hopefully I can make a run at first place.”

As a team, Kansas is in a tie for ninth place overall. In typical Kansas golf fashion this year, the Jayhawks shot a high score in the morning, a 291, and a low score in the afternoon, a 279.

“I don’t know what it is,” Coach Kit Grove said. “I was talking about it with Coach Handrigan earlier, and we were trying to figure out why we start off so slow. There were perfect scoring conditions this morning, but we came out flat.”

Kansas is in a similar position to the one it was in last week, when the Jayhawks were one stroke behind Nebraska and Grove said the team had to beat Nebraska for Big 12 standings. They didn’t. This time around, they are in a tie with Nebraska at 570 total strokes.

“We have to play the golf course as always and we can’t worry about what other teams are doing,” Grove said. “But we really want to beat them tomorrow.”

Barbee said he agreed that it would be a good thing to beat Nebraska.

“You always want to get wins against other teams in the Big 12,” Barbee said. “It would be really nice to beat Nebraska.”

Though Barbee is sitting at 137 strokes, all the other Kansas golfers are within two strokes of each other. Chris Gilbert, Simi Valley, Calif., freshman is at 145. Bryan Hackenberg, Denver, Colo., senior, is one stroke behind Gilbert with a two round total of 146. Jeff Bell, Wichita, freshman and Alex Gutesha, Greenwood Village, Colo., freshman both totaled 147 strokes.

The Jayhawks can reasonably jump up several spots today to as high as fourth place.

“We always seem to play well on holes 4-16,” Grove said. “We gotta get engaged tomorrow and play well on the first holes and finish strong on the last holes.”

— Edited by Abby Olcese

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