For the second consecutive tournament, the University of Rhode Island men’s golf team made a final round comeback to secure a victory at the University of Connecticut Invitational this week.
Coming off a runner-up finish at the Ryan T. Lee Memorial Collegiate last week, first-year Tyler Burneau again led the way for the Rams in round one on Sunday. Bruneau made a bogey on the third hole, but went the rest of the round without a blemish and made six birdies along the way. The round of five-under had him sitting atop the individual leaderboard by himself at the end of the day.
As a team, URI were tied atop the leaderboard at the end of round one for the second straight tournament. They shot one-under on Sunday and were tied with tournament hosts UConn in what was shaping up to be a two-team race as both teams were five shots clear of the next best score.
Rhode Island struggled as a team in round two on Monday, shooting five-over and falling behind UConn by three strokes. They particularly struggled on the 18th hole, with their top three players all making bogey or worse.
A bright spot for the Rams came from someone who battled through a tough opening round, third-year Aidan O’Donovan. After he shot five-over and was in 50th place on Sunday, he made just one bogey the entire day on Monday which came on the final hole. His bounceback round of even par moved him more than 20 spots up the individual leaderboard to tied-28th.
“[O’Donovan] made 40 pars in the tournament, 40 pars in 54 holes in those conditions is tough,” URI Head Coach Gregg Burke said. “We could not be prouder of Aidan and I believe that Aidan can win a tournament for us.”
Coming into Tuesday trailing UConn, the Rams showed early that they were on a mission to get wins in back-to-back weeks as three of their five players made a birdie on the opening hole. They ended up shooting 13 strokes better than UConn on the final day on their way to a 10-shot victory.
“On that particular day [Tuesday], we played tougher than all those other teams,” Burke said. “The most important stat to me is that my four guys knew it was them against the world and look at what they did.”
First-year Luke Stennett played a vital role in helping the Rams secure this victory as he went three-under which was a better final round than anyone else in the entire field. He ended up finishing in fifth at one-under for the tournament and now has two top-10 finishes to begin his collegiate career.
O’Donovan continued his climb up the leaderboard on Tuesday with a round of two-under. He ended up in the top 10 for the tournament and made a 41-spot leap up the leaderboard from where he was following the opening round.
Once again, Bruneau saw himself in the heart of contention on the individual leaderboard as he held a one-shot lead at five-under heading to the final hole. As he seeked to finish off the first win of his collegiate career, he ended up making a double bogey on the 18th and finished runner-up and one shot off the lead for the second straight week.
“[Bruneau] has the same potential to win the next tournament as he did before his first tournament,” Burke said. “It will come and I have no doubt that he will be in contention over and over again.”
Through an all-around team effort with three players finishing in the top 10, the Rams got their second win in as many tournaments to start the year after being held without a win all of last season.
“My guys have put so much effort in the weight room,” Burke said. “It gives us both the physical stamina, but more importantly, the emotional fortitude, to just fight through anything.”
Rhode Island will now get some time off before riding this momentum into their final tournament of the fall season at the Nassau Intercollegiate on Oct. 21-22.