BATON ROUGE, La. — Freshman Cole Sherwood led an solid first day for Vanderbilt at the LSU Invitational on Friday.
From Austin, Texas, Sherwood was one of six players to finish under par Monday. He carded a 1-under-par on at the University Club course and goes into Saturday’s second round tied for third and just two strokes off the lead.
As a team, Vanderbilt had moved to the front of the leaderboard coming up to its final three holes of the day. But a rough finish dropped the Dores into a fourth-place tie (295, 7-over-par) and two strokes back of leader Illinois (+5).
“I thought we got off to a good start today,” Vanderbilt head coach Scott Limbaugh said. “We asked the guys to be excited about playing and play with passion and I think we did that. It’s a tough golf course and the wind was blowing today so It was really tough.”
Reid Davenport (tied for seventh) nearly kept pace with Sherwood and finished even par Friday. William Moll, Harrison Ott and Matthew Riedel all ended up 4-over-par and are tied for 37th.
Vanderbilt freshman Jansen Preston, competing as an individual, is tied for 51st after shooting a 5-over-par 77.
“Cole played good golf today and did a great job lifting the team. We want to continue to help him understand how important consistency is and help him to stay present in his process,” Limbaugh said. “That’s always a challenge with young guys and he’s no different. Reid played really well today and he seems to have a good understanding of what is needed to play well here and that’s patience not perfection.
“As a team, I thought we played well, but probably didn’t finished the round the way we wanted to. They are all difficult holes finishing, but number 17 cost us a lot of momentum. We will learn from it and hopefully be better going forward.”
Jerry Ji of Illinois has the individual lead after 18 holes thanks to a 3-under-par 69.
“Saturday is another great opportunity to go out and play closer to our potential which I thought we did today. We had some guys step up today and need that again tomorrow,” Limbaugh said. “My request is for the guys to be courageous and that means being fully present in the face of adversity and staying in the fight.
“There will be adversity on this course and we have to be able to stay in the fight. I’m excited to see us compete again.”
Saturday’s action for Vanderbilt is scheduled to begin at 9:20 a.m. Live scoring can be found HERE.
