The Seton Hall golf team tied for fourth place this weekend in the 2011 Fireline Towson Invitational.
The team finished with a 53-over-par 917. Junior John Dawson Neufeld was the leading scorer for Seton Hall and tied for 14th with George Mason's Silas VanSky and Georgetown's Brian Dorfman with a 10-over-par. Sophomore Brandon Park finished two shots behind him and tied for 20th with Longwood's Austin Gray.
When asked about his key to success, Neufeld said it was his putting and striking. When asked about what caused his improvement from the first round into the second round, Neufeld said it was getting better shots and having things go right for him.
One big factor to the tournament was the conditions on the course. The course was very sloppy, which caused players to have a rough time in the opening round. Once the Seton Hall players figured out how to work through the conditions and the weather started to get better, they excelled; getting the third best score in the second round, only finishing behind Kent State and Rhode Island, and finished the first day tied for eighth with Georgetown and George Mason.
Neufeld said he did not have any problems with the course conditions, as he grew up in western Canada. "The spring in Canada is pretty treacherous on the west coast with all the rain so I was used to all those low balls."
When asked about the performance over the weekend, head coach Clay White said he though they did better than they did in their last tournament. "I was okay with performance. I thought we could have been a few shots better, but overall it was respectable. I'm not ecstatic about it," White said. He also said that he thought they could have jumped into second place if they had a good third round.
White said that the key to improving is the wedges and scoring better. Neufeld feels the key is team cohesiveness, which is created through camaraderie and playing well.
"Golf's an individual sport but I really think in team golf we need to start relying on each other and know that we're there for each other. If someone makes a bad shot someone else will pick us up and just have that team attitude," Neufeld said.
The next tournament is the River Landing Intercollegiate in Wallace, N.C., April 8 and 9.
Brandon Biskobing can be reached at Brandon.biskobing@student.shu.edu.
