Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

Golf wraps up Fall season with win

The Golf RedHawks finished their fall season on a high note, placing first at the Dayton Flyer Invitational Oct.16-17.

Senior Patrick Flavin and freshmen Jack Herceg and Charlie Nikitas all placed in the top-10 individually, Flavin taking first overall.

Patience and resilience -- these values are what led to the RedHawks victory according to Head Coach Zac Zedrick.

"The golf course just doesn't let up," Zedrick said. "I thought we did an awesome job [...] on the 36-hole day. I thought the team handled it great."

The RedHawks had to deal with the added pressure of maintaining the lead after both of Monday's rounds into the final round on Tuesday.

"You go to bed with the lead, and it's a lot different than just having the chance to win," Zedrick said. "There's a different kind of pressure."

Freshmen Herceg and Nikitas showed promise, finishing at +1 and +5, respectively.

"Our freshmen have done a great job making the adjustment to college," Zedrick said. "For both of those guys to contribute the way they did, especially yesterday, they did not play like freshmen. It was really cool to see."

The win at Dayton was Patrick Flavin's fourth individual tournament win of the season, adding to his total of eight and making him the leader for all time wins in Miami's history.

Flavin attributed his success in Dayton to a combination of momentum from the past three weeks and his teammates' success.

"When you got your teammates playing really well it really just fires you up to keep the momentum rolling," said Flavin. "To finish on a high note like that was really cool."

"I've had to take a step back and appreciate this," said Coach Zedrick. "I'm his coach but ultimately Pat's the one out there hitting the shots and getting it done. It's just really, really cool seeing him have that kind of Fall."

Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter

The RedHawks have four months until their next tournament. It's called the "off season," but there isn't much downtime for the players. According to Zedrick, the focus is going to shift from performance on the course to academics.

"It's important that they wrap the fall up academically on a high note and we're on good track there," said Zedrick.

The team will be taking some time to rest from practices and "recharge" from now until Thanksgiving, but will be implementing a strength and conditioning program.

"It will be a pretty radical shift in how we're doing things," Zedrick said. "There's another team out there that has done some things very differently and they've seen tremendous benefits. We're fortunate enough to be able to bring in some of those concepts and ideas [...] into what we do in our off season so I know the guys are fired up about that."

The RedHawks will test the effectiveness of their offseason routines beginning Feb. 12-13 in the 2018 Earl Yestingsmeier Match Play.