After finishing day one in fifth place, the Georgia Southern University men’s golf team fell into a tied seventh place finish alongside Liberty University in the SunTrust Gator Invitational this weekend.

“The Gator had a good field this year, a lot of top 25 and top 50 teams in the field, so we were playing real good competition,” Head Coach Larry Mays said.  “A lot of things can happen round to round; good breaks, bad breaks, that type of thing, so we’re looking at the overall picture.  We’re striving to get as many guys in the top 15 or 20 in a tournament week in and week out.”

Day one concluded with three Eagles in the top 30.  Junior Scott Wolfes was tied for 15th and posted a 71-74=145, junior Charlie Martin tied for 21st after carding a 74-72=146 and senior Will Evans tied for 27th with a 75-72=147.  Junior Matthew Mierzejewski played as an individual and tied for 34th along with junior Kim Koivu.

“We’re just always trying to put ourselves in the best position as a team to get the highest percentage we can get and to do that in golf you have to get the individual players playing well,” Mays said.

Day two got off to a rougher start for the Eagles as a team, but Wolfes contributed well to the team when he shot a three-under-par in the last round, moving him up from his previous 15th place into sixth.  Wolfes rallied back from a tough start after posting a bogey on the first hole.

“[Wolfes] made a mistake on the first hole, did a bad two shots and that led to a bogey and then he played real good golf there on out,” Mays said.  “He just kept pluggin’ and knew that if he kept making good shots, good things would happen.”

The rest of the Eagles struggled in the third round.  Evans shot a 73 and tied for 30th after playing three over on the front nine and even par on the back nine.  Martin also tied for 30th, but finished with a 74 as a result of golfing two-over on the front nine and back nine.  Koivu carded a 77 and senior Hayden Anderson finished with a 79.

Mierzejewski golfed his best score as an Eagle, 68, and landed in a tie for 14th.  Mierzejewski racked up four birdies starting with hole 10, but bogeyed holes six and nine to end the round.

“That’s something we want our guys to focus on, just getting off to a solid start instead of digging a hole for ourselves, which we did definitely two of the three rounds in the Gator so we’ve got to get out of the blocks a little better if we want to compete against some of the top teams in the country,” Mays said.

The team will be traveling to Hoover, Al, for the Samford Intercollegiate on March 3-4.