Wright State golfers appear poised for another strong season
The Wright State golf team blitzed through its schedule in 2021-22, winning a program-record nine of the 12 tournaments it entered, including a 10-shot victory at the Horizon League championships.
But when the 2022-23 season started, the Raiders weren’t quite able to produce the same magic with their clubs. The birdie barrages didn’t come in clutch moments.
In five fall events, they finished first twice and second, third and fourth in the others. That’s the kind of play most teams at their level would celebrate, but to second-year coach Conner Lash, it fell a little short of expectations. “We won a couple tournaments and had some good stretches, but it seemed tough to put three good rounds together and run away with tournaments,” he said.
“It brought us back to earth a little bit after last year. Hopefully, we’ll use that to our advantage and be more motivated in the spring.”
Wright State will lace up the spikes again Monday and Tuesday at the University of Houston’s Border Olympics in Laredo, Texas.
It’s the first of five events leading up to the league tourney April 23-25.
The Raiders return four of five starters, including their top two players, and were picked as the overwhelming favorites in the Horizon League preseason poll on Feb. 2.
No. 1 player Tyler Goecke won four tourneys last year and had a first, three seconds and a fifth in the fall.
The senior from Carroll gives Lash the comfort of knowing he’ll always have a player battling for medalist honors.
“He’s got a lot of internal drive to be better. I don’t have to push him or hold his hand. He wants to be the best guy when he tees it up,” Lash said.
The 5-foot-7 Goecke, a premier ball-striker, set the program’s single-season scoring record last year with a 70.47 average, breaking Ryan Wenzler’s 2016-17 mark of 71.73.
“He’s got a really good mental game. He doesn’t have a whole lot of weaknesses. Obviously, he could pick up some distance. But at the end of the day, there’s guys on Tour who don’t hit it super far. They win and are successful,” Lash said.
Goecke broke the league tourney record with a threeround total of 208 last year.
But he wasn’t the individual champ.
Teammate Mikkel Mathiesen walked way with the title with a 203 total, seven shots better than the previous low score.
His third-round 65 also was a league record.
The senior was born in Denmark and grew up in Qatar, but he speaks fluent English. When he speaks, that is.
“He’s kind of like that silent assassin. That’s what we call him. He’s quiet, and all of a sudden it’s like, what happened? Either he just got beat or he popped off a bunch of birdies,” the 29-year-old Lash said.
The Raiders also have two players taking their fifth years of eligibility in Cole Corder and Davis Root. Both won tourneys last year and helped the Raiders to a solid showing in the NCAA regionals at the Ohio State Scarlet Course.
Needing to make the top five to advance to the 30-team national championships, they finished tied with Kentucky for ninth, just six strokes out of the fifth spot.
Goecke and Root were tied for 12th. But Mathiesen could only manage a tie for 63rd.
That’s why there’s such optimism this season. The Raiders know what they can do if everyone plays to his potential.
“That gave everyone confidence that, wait a minute, we CAN do this. These other schools aren’t that much better than us,” Lash said.
“We just need to button up a few things, and we’ll be there.”