On Monday and Tuesday, the men’s golf team completed the fall portion of their season at the Otter Invitational, held at California State University, Monterey Bay. While the team would’ve hoped to finish higher than 10th, a tough start to the tournament hurt their chances. Despite this, they rebounded nicely.

The Clan struggled through rounds one and two, shooting 300 and 302 over the rounds. This put the team at 26 over par as they headed into the third and final round, far from the top-tier teams in the tournament.

However, SFU turned things around in a big way shooting 293 in the final round. Out of all the teams in the tournament, SFU achieved the second lowest score of the round. They only trailed Lynn University, who shot a 288 in round three and finished the tournament as the only team under par (–3).

As has become expected, Isaac Lee led all SFU golfers in the tournament, and finished sixth out of the 92 golfers at the Invitational. He shot rounds of 74, 71, and 71, putting him at even par over the tournament. This is the third straight tournament in which Lee has led the Clan.

“Isaac once again delivered a very impressive performance, especially for a freshman on a golf course that he had never seen before,” said head coach Matthew Steinbach to SFU Athletics after the tournament.  

While the 10th-place finish may not have been the ideal ending to the fall season for SFU, the final round was encouraging. This was Steinbach’s take on the tournament to SFU Athletics:

“We were a bit disappointed with our performance on Day 1 as the course got the best of us but we finished on a strong note. We knew we had our work cut out for us, we didn’t climb as many spots as we’d hoped, but still, it was a good way to end the semester. We’ll take advantage of the coming months to improve and elevate various aspects of our game so we are prepared for the all-important second half of the season.”

We will look forward to men’s golf returning in the spring semester.