The ISU men’s golf team got off to a disappointing start to the fall portion of its season with a last-place finish in the William H. Tucker Invitational in Albuquerque, N.M. The Cyclones shot rounds of 297, 306 and 305 to finish with a 908, 57 strokes back from tournament winner UNLV.

“These guys are all better than that – they do great in qualifying, we need to find out how to take that out to the competitions,” said coach Jay Horton. “The effort is there and the desire is there, and if we can keep that up, we’ll be fine.”

UNLV shot an 851 to win by 10 strokes over BYU. Then came three Big 12 schools – Texas Tech, Baylor and Colorado. New Mexico and Arizona, two teams supposed to vie for the title, were stranded back in a tie for eighth place.

Chris Baker led Iowa State with a 222, good for a 47th-place tie.

“I hit the ball awesome, and had I just been putting decent, I could have done better,” Baker said. “But the putter let me down.”

Rodney Hamblin, John Larson and Joe Cermak rounded out the scoring with 226, 230 and 232, respectively.

Larson led the team in the first round, firing a 72 in the first 18 holes of his first collegiate tournament. But a second-round 80 brought him back down and he finished with a third-round 78.

“To tell the truth, it surprises me more when they shoot in the 78s, 79s and 80s than when they shoot the low 70s,” Horton said. “That’s more what I expect.”

Horton said he found some good things in the weekend, though. Last year, Arkansas finished last in this tournament and went on to go to the NCAA championship tournament. Horton said his team needs to have the attitude to use the loss as a stepping stone and not a failure.

“We struggled, but we didn’t start off against the easiest field in the world,” Horton said. “We talked afterward about how we are going to perceive ourselves and how we are going to go on with the rest of the year.”

With the youth on the team, Baker said he is confident it can get past this quickly and move on to next week’s tournament, the Adams Cup in Newport, R.I. He said he has some things to work on, particularly his short game and putting, but thinks he will improve.

“Going into [the tournament] it looked good, but it didn’t turn out that way,” Baker said. “Hopefully, next week will be better.”