After a long three-week break between competitive golf, the Iowa State men’s golf team is poised to find its footing after a slow start to the season.

It started in Madison, with the Cyclones tying for 8th. It then went to the Windon Memorial Classic, and had a poor second round that doomed it to 10th place out of 14. With this certainly not being the start the team was looking for, it’s easy to get discouraged. Head Coach Andrew Tank wants to make sure the team is able to move forward and focus on the next task at hand.

“It’s been good to reflect on where we’re at, and it gives us a chance to regroup, get refocused. I’m excited to get back at it”, said Tank when asked about how the team was feeling after the hiatus.

The golfers certainly know what they need to do with their own individual games, as well as how to recover as a team in order to turn their season around.

“We’ve been doing really good work at practice these last few days to really get us in the scoring mindset”, said senior leader Tripp Kinney regarding how the team plans to bounce back.

Another leader, Lachlan Barker, says the key to the Cyclones finding a stride is having confidence in themselves.

“The biggest thing I need to push through the team is confidence, and everyone having full faith in themselves”, said Barker.

The Fighting Irish Classic is another familiar course coming at a familiar time for the Cyclones, they were there last year right before the first Big-12 match play of the season, as they are again in 2019.

The team finished sixth in the team scoring in South Bend last year, shooting a collective 11 under par.  Barker led the way for the Cyclones, shooting his best 54 holes of his career to date with a collective 203, or 10 under par.

There will be lots of familiar faces from last year, as well as so far this season, with Georgia Southern, host Notre Dame, and North Carolina all returning to compete.

The team is certainly poised and focused to use this tournament as a turnaround point, and they will try to get all their games going in the right direction before a very important few days in Houston, Texas for Big 12 match play.