SFA Begins Quest For SLC Championship
4/20/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
McKINNEY, Texas -- Stephen F. Austin begins its quest for a Southland Conference title this morning, competing in the 2015 SLC Championships at Stonebridge Country Club in McKinney.
· SLC Men's Golf Championship Central
· Live Scoring (Golfstat)
The championship returns to Stonebridge, the par-72, 7,219-yard course that hosted the event in 2014 in which the Lumberjacks tied for third, their best finish since the 2003 season. SFA enters the tournament as the number four overall seed and will tee off in the third wave of groupings, getting underway at 9 a.m.
The `Jacks are finishing off a challenging spring in which SFA is playing in its sixth tournament in six weeks, posting three top-five team finishes during that span. The Lumberjacks are coming off back-to-back third place showings at both the Jim West Intercollegiate and Texas A&M Reveille Challenge, shooting a combined 4-over par through the final two events.
Senior Blake Pugh will lead SFA into the conference championship playing arguably the best golf of his career. The reigning SLC Golfer of the Month, Pugh has finished first and second in the last two events with a combined 13-under par, capturing the Jim West individual title on April 7. He is the `Jacks' scoring average leader at 73.04, just ahead of junior Luke Sheehan's 73.15, as the SFA duo has combined for seven top-10 and 11 top-20 individual finishes on the year.
Senior Bradley Phelps, junior Nathan Weant and sophomore Baxter Ward round out the SFA scorecard at the conference championships as all three have been key contributors throughout the season. Ward ranks third on the team with a 74.17 scoring average, posting three top-10 finishes, with Weant averaging 74.30 per round and Phelps posting a 75.05 scoring average.
As a team, SFA has posted a 291.81 scoring average in 2014-15, which currently ranks as the best single-season average dating back to the 1984-85 season when records became available. The `Jacks have recorded 24 sub-300 rounds on the year, finishing in the top-10 in all but one event and capturing the team title at the Arkansas State Fall Beach Classic November 3-4, 2014.
SFA will be teamed up with Houston Baptist and Lamar in the first round pairings, beginning with Weant's 9:00 a.m. tee time. The `Jacks will tee off in nine-minute increments, working up to Pugh's 9:36 tee time. Live scoring of the event is available at Golfstat.com with full results posted at SFAJacks.com as they become available.
SFA Tee Times -- Round One
9:00 a.m. -- Nathan Weant
9:09 a.m. -- Baxter Ward
9:18 a.m. -- Bradley Phelps
9:27 a.m. -- Luke Sheehan
9:36 a.m. -- Blake Pugh
-SFA-
