Sweeping the competition
Rams’ Burgess shoots 39, but Hurricanes take top spot in quad-match
According to his own assessment, there was nothing special about William Garrett’s round of golf at Hawthorne Country Club in La Plata on Wednesday afternoon.
“I had a rough tee shot off the first hole and then punched it into the bunker. I made a great sand save, but I just never got anything going in the beginning,” he said. “I had eight pars and then I birdied the last hole. I never did anything really bad. I never did anything really good.”
But the steady round that ended with him 1-under-par stood as the low round of the day and led the Hurricanes to a sweep in their match with Leonardtown, McDonough and St. Charles. Led by Garrett’s 35, Huntingtown’s aggregate 161 comfortably defeated second-place Leonardtown’s 191. McDonough came in at 196, while St. Charles did not have enough golfers to constitute a team score.
Garrett opened the season the previous week with an identical 1-under 35 playing at Lake Presidential Golf Club in Upper Marlboro, the Hurricanes’ home course. So while the season’s first two weeks have maybe not been full of highlights, his steady play has helped Huntingtown (5-0 overall) to a solid start in the standings.
“I definitely need to work on my iron play,” he said. “I missed a couple greens and didn’t hit them as close as I needed to or wanted to. But overall I can’t be mad with a 1-under. It’s perfectly fine, no bogeys.”
Backing up Garrett’s 35 with a second round in the 30s for Huntingtown was Nick Garofalo, who carded a 3-over 39 for the Hurricanes playing in the
sixth group. Similar to Garrett, Garofalo did not start in quite the fashion he would have liked, but he still put together a relatively consistent round to help the team.
“I started off with a bogey, had a bad tee shot and lipped out the par putt,” Garofalo said. “I was a little mad about that. I came back with a par on the third hole. I put it to about a foot for a birdie so I got back even. Then I started getting a bunch of pars and at the end I got a 6. I hit a really bad tee shot. Then [on No. 9] I got a bogey, ended up with a 39. it was a pretty good round.”
Garofalo very nearly was not in the lineup for Wednesday’s match, as he earned his spot in team qualifying just the day before.
“I played really bad in practice one day, so I had to qualify for the sixth spot,” he said. “I played pretty decent yesterday, shot 41 in the practice round, so then I came out today and played pretty well.”
McDonough’s Mark Burgess also shot 39 to lead the youthful Rams’ (2-4) effort. Tucker Evans carded a 43 to pace Leonardtown (3-3), while St. Charles’ small team (0-4) did not have a golfer break 50.
For Burgess, who shot 37 at Hawthorne in the first match of the season, Wednesday’s round was a bit of a grind.
“I hit the ball really well, but I couldn’t make any putts within 10 feet,” he said. “I was good off the tee, hit 8 of 9 greens in regulation. I just couldn’t putt.”
With a relatively youthful team, Burgess expects the Rams to improve as the season progresses.
“We have a lot of younger kids, so they’re just learning,” he said. “They’re already getting better. I hopefully will drop a couple of strokes. I’m still getting better, but I feel good personally about how the season is going to go. I think we’ll do solid, upper-middle pack in SMAC.”