Despite a rough start in the Transylvania Fall Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 8, players on the Webster University golf team challenged themselves to show teams what they are capable of on a golf course, and that was to finish strong as a group on Sunday, Sept. 9.
Coach Andrew Belsky pushed his squad on the final day to make a statement to the other teams.
That’s exactly what the team did; the Gorloks pushed themselves to finish the tournament in 14th place. The first day the team shot a total of 321, and turned it around and shot 308 on Day 2.
Four out of the five Webster golfers had better scores on the final day, as freshman Brodie Dakin made the biggest leap of all by cutting his strokes down by eight with a score of 76. Dakin shot a total of 160 on the weekend and was tied for 84th individually. Dakin said he was more confident during his Sunday round.
“I had a nice meeting with coach and the guys on Saturday night,” Dakin said. “I eliminated mental mistakes and just went out and shot a score that should break me through my slump.”
Saturday night, the Gorloks held a meeting to discuss their performance and where they are at in the season.
“We had a long discussion about their level of commitment and what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong and do what we have to do to move forward, because obviously what we’ve been doing is not working,” Belsky said.
Junior J.T. Beckmann also had a good turnaround. He shot an 82 on the first day and cut his score by five strokes with a 77 to conclude the tournament. Beckmann said he wanted to play smart on the last day, but overall, he wasn’t satisfied with how the team played.
“I just made sure to play smart and take the higher-percentage shots instead of taking riskier shots,” Beckmann said. “The team and I aren’t happy with how we played; we can do a lot better than how we did. It was a good step in the right direction to improve the second day the way we did.”
Even though Beckmann didn’t perform his best, he continued to fight and did whatever it took to have a better score than his first day.
“I could have played a lot smarter and helped the team a ton more the first day,” Beckmann said. “Then the second day, I just had a few bad swings that kept me from posting a really good score. But those always can happen during a round, (it’s) just a matter of how you make up for them.”
Belsky said poor decisions were the problem on the first day.
“We made a lot of really bad decisions — we are not playing with a lot of confidence, and when you combine bad decisions and not enough confidence, bad things happen,” Belsky said.
Webster will next travel to Minnesota to play in the Saint John’s Fall Invitational on Sept. 15 and 16.
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