The Iowa State men’s golf team finished playing at the Fighting Irish Classic Monday, tying for sixth place. The Cyclones began the tournament with the start they wanted, but some third round mistakes cost them a higher finish.

The fast start Iowa State was hoping for

Coach Andrew Tank said in the past, when reflecting on the Cyclones’ first two tournaments, that he wants his team to come out fast. Iowa State found itself having to recover from subpar first round performances in their first tournaments of the season, but at the Fighting Irish Classic, it was a different story.

“I was definitely pleased with the team’s effort and attitude at this tournament,” Tank said. “We got ourselves in a great position from the start which is what we wanted. Everyone knew how they wanted to play the course and the guys did a good job at executing their strategy.”

Iowa State entered the Fighting Irish Classic with a first round scoring average of 296, with scores of 301 at the Badger Invitational and a 292 at the Windon Memorial. The first round played out quite differently for the Cyclones this time around.

Iowa State shot a season-low 278 and quickly found themselves sitting in fourth place. Sophomore Lachlan Barker shot 6-under-par in the first round, junior Tripp Kinney scored a minus-2 and Ricky Costello, Sam Vincent and Frank Lindwall all shot 1-over-par for the first round.

Barker is no stranger when it comes to being on top of the individual leaderboard for Iowa State, and with his strong performance combined with his team’s fast start, Barker was in first place after the Cyclones’ impressive first round.

“We got it going right away but we all got into gear toward the end of the first round and the start of the second [round] because there were a lot of scoreboards around, so we knew where we put ourselves,” Barker said. “We built a positive lead and it lead to some great golf.”

Two leading performances

Barker and Kinney have emerged as two of the leaders for the Cyclones with the golfers earning a top three finish during at least one of the first tournaments of the season. They gave solid performances at the Fighting Irish Classic. Barker ended up tying for seventh and Kinney finished tied for 17th place.

Kinney and Barker scored under par in every round of the tournament while also combining for only 12 bogies during the three-round stretch. Barker said he was effective because he drove the ball well and that he was always on the green.

“I believe I putt the best I ever have in the first two rounds,” Barker said. “I wanted my ball to be in play as much as I could.”

Final round costs the Cyclones a top-five finish

As the final round approached, Iowa State headed in, sitting in fourth place, hoping to add another top-three finish to the start of their season. The final round proved to be costly as Iowa State had an abnormal final round of golf, filled with bogies and mistakes.

“It was a tough final day for us, really for all five guys I think,” Tank said. “We had one of the worst team scores in the final round at the tournament which was disappointing from how well we started off.”

The Cyclones shot a 288 in the final round, with 18 bogies. In contrast, the first two rounds only saw 26 bogies fall. Iowa State dropped two places by the end of the final round. Barker shot 1-under-par and Kinney shot even. Vincent shot +1-over-par, Costello scored a +4 for the final round and Lindwall rounded it out with a score of 5-over-par.

Lindwall said that frustration boiled over for some of the players and led to some mistakes. Lindwall says the team couldn’t do things that were in their control down the stretch.

“We have to move on because we got a big week coming up so we need to forget about it,” Tank said.

The Iowa State men’s golf team ends the first half of the regular season when Big 12 conference play begins on Friday.