FORT WORTH, Texas – The Vanderbilt men’s golf team sits in third place at the end of two rounds at the Ben Hogan Collegiate Invitational, while the Commodores have four golfers inside the top 20 on the player leaderboard.
Vanderbilt carded 10-under 550 through the first 36 holes of play at Shady Oaks Country Club. The Dores head into Tuesday’s final round two strokes behind second-place Arizona State and eight strokes off from leader Oklahoma. The Commodores opened the tournament by shooting 9-under 271 to end Round 1 in first place.
“I was excited to see us get off to a good start this morning and get some momentum,” said Vanderbilt men’s golf head coach Scott Limbaugh. “Jackson and Gordon played really well early on, and Cole finished very well. I thought we lost a little momentum late in the first round and it carried over a bit into the afternoon round. It was great to see Matthew bounce back and give us a big lift and I thought Gordon grinded out a good score without his best stuff.
“When you play against great competition like we are this week, you cannot have lapses in focus, self-talk, and attention to detail and I thought we had some of that late in the day. We have to be able to focus on the right things at the right times and obviously, that’s my responsibility to help our guys do that.”
Senior Cole Sherwood and junior Gordon Sargent both ended the day tied for seventh place after each golfer carded 4-under 136 through two rounds. Sherwood ended the first round in a tie for first place with teammate Jackson Van Paris, as each shot 4-under 66 in the opening round. Sherwood carded even par in the second round to conclude the day at 4-under.
Meanwhile, Sargent posted round scores of 67-69 to end his day at 4-under. The All-American collected an eagle in the first round on the par 5 Hole 14. The junior currently holds the tournament’s second-best par 5 score at 4-under.
Van Paris heads into Round 3 of the Ben Hogan Collegiate Invitational in a tie for 15th after ending his day at 2-under 138. Graduate student Matthew Riedel carded even par through two rounds and heads into Tuesday’s finale in a tie for 19th.
The third round of the Ben Hogan Collegiate Invitational is set for 8 a.m. at Shady Oaks Country Club. Vanderbilt will tee off between 9:30-10:06 a.m. Fans can follow all of the action at GolfStat.com.
“Tomorrow is an important day for us and we need to embrace that,” said Limbaugh. “We need to be locked in, having fun, and competing to our standards. I like this team a lot and I’m excited to get back out there with them.”
For more information on the Vanderbilt men’s golf team, follow @VandyMGolf on Instagram and Facebook.
