The Iowa State men’s golf team will be back to compete in the Prestige at PGA West in La Quinta, California this week. The Cyclones will attempt to bounce back from last month’s Arizona Intercollegiate, where they finished 10th place.

“It’s a great tournament, really strong field, and I’m excited to go out there to compete,” head coach Andrew Tank said.

Coming from an off season where players had a lot of time to rebuild and consider their focus.

The leaders of this team try to influence the team by setting out their own game plan.

“I just gonna approach it with the same thing every meet, have a game plan and go aggressive every meet,” junior Denzel Ieremia said.

Ieremia has experience on this golf course and understands the mindset needed of his team to come out and compete. Last year he finished tied for 64th place in the 2016 PGA West.

“We have all done a better job understanding what keep us calm and relaxed,” senior Ruben Sondjaja said.

He along with the rest of the team hope to continue with their strides by staying calm to avoid any mistakes. Noting that in the past, sometimes a meet can be made or break by having a player lose focus and have strokes that could potentially hurt the overall score as explained by Sondjaja.

Last year he placed tied for 34th after finishing his final round at 70.

“Stay calm knowing there are a lot of good teams there, at the same time we can play some pretty good golf, and knowing the amount of work we put in,” Tripp Kinney said.

Freshman and Iowa native, Kinney, will be competing on his first PGA West along with Sam Vincent. Since earning a spot in the starters, Tripp has placed within the top-40. His best performance being tied for 13th at the Pinetree Invite.

“Hopefully I can turn around this semester and help out the team a little more.” fellow freshman Sam Vincent said.

Vincent will look into this competition to improve on his last few meets, and attempt to stay focus on the calm mindset the team has placed ahead of the PGA West. Yet this pressure does not get to him as sees this with full optimism.

“I think the biggest goal is lead them back to the NCAA finals, certainly on track for that, but we must continue to ensure that, didn’t have a good start to the spring, but we’re looking to rebound for the last stretch at PGA west,” Tank said.