Posts tagged Jason Burstyn
CU men’s golfs team in sixth at NCAA Central Regional
May 16th
Buffs ten swings away from first place
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Colorado men’s golf team opened strong here Thursday in the NCAA Central/Fayetteville Regional, with the Buffaloes in sixth place and definitely in contention for a top five finish and the berth into the NCAA Finals that comes with it.
No. 33 Illinois leads the pack with a 6-under 282 score, thanks to the efforts of two true freshmen that combined to go 11 strokes under what some call the “happy side of par.” No. 4 Texas is second (285), followed by No. 11 Oklahoma State (286), No. 22 Kent State (288) and No. 12 and host Arkansas (290).
The Buffaloes, ranked No. 58 by GolfStat and No. 67 by Golfweek, turned in a 4-over 292 to stand in sixth. No. 20 SMU is five back of CU, with the remaining seven teams in the field all at 300 or higher.
The top five teams out of 14 competing will advance to the NCAA Finals, set for May 28-June 2 in Atlanta, Ga., as will the top two individuals not associated with the five teams that qualify.
The four Buffs who contributed to the team score made the turn at 1-over; they had a collective hiccup on the first four holes on the front side (4-over), but played the last five at 1-under. The end result was Colorado placing four in the top 25 through 18 holes, matched only by Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, three of the nation’s top 12 teams.
“It was definitely a good start, which we chalk up to our primary focus today being was to be patient and have a great attitude,” head coach Roy Edwards said. “The guys were phenomenal with that. I’m really proud of them, and that’s really the main reason we enjoyed a solid round.
“We need to do the same thing for tomorrow,” he continued. “That’s to be patient, take it one shot at a time. Right now, they’re only thinking about their first tee shot (Friday). You cannot get ahead of yourself here. It rained overnight and the course was really soft, so it played as easiest as it’s going to get today. The scores are likely not going to be as low, so the emphasis will be on the importance of being patient. That’s what we’ll stress.”
Sophomore David Oraee led the Buffaloes with a 1-under 71, which has him tied for ninth individually. He had a steady round with four birdies and 11 pars against three bogeys; the four birds tied for 10th most in the field. Playing to even par much of the round, he finished with birdies on Nos. 7 and 9 with a bogeys sandwiched in-between to get it into red numbers on the 7,251-yard, par-72 The Blessings Golf Club course layout.
Freshman Philip Juel-Berg continued his stellar rookie season, posting a 1-over 73, which has him tied for 20th. He had three birdies, 11 pars and four bogeys on his day, as he made the turn at 3-over but played the front side at 2-under, thanks to birds on Nos. 6 and 9. There are 14 freshmen in the field; Juel-Berg finished currently is seventh among them, with three of the six ahead of him recording even-par rounds of 72.
CU’s No. 1 player and stroke average leader, senior Jason Burstyn, fashioned a 2-over 74, tying him for 25th; he had four birdies like Oraee, along with nine pars, four bogeys and one double. The latter came on No. 6, a 418-yard, par-4 that played as the day’s fourth toughest hole; that pushed him to 4-over on the day, but he bounced back and closed with birdies on Nos. 7 and 9.
Senior Derek Fribbs also shot a 74, with three birdies and 11 pars against three bogeys and a double. He got off to one of the hot starts of the day, standing 3-under after he birdied Nos. 12, 13 and 15 – a par-5, a par-4 and a par-3, respectively – but came back down to Earth with bogeys on No. 17 and then on Nos. 1 and 4. He was cruising along at even par until his final hole of the day, the 535-yard, par-5 No. 9, where he doubled after hitting his drive into a hazard. It was his first double bogey in six rounds.
“I was hitting it in their close and utilizing the slopes,” Fribbs said of his start. “But after a while, the putts weren’t falling. I still had opportunities on the back nine, I just couldn’t make any putts to take full advantage of things. The course played a little easier today than expected because you could hold your shots better than we thought, but we also had good course management today.”
Junior Johnny Hayes shot an 8-over 80, tying him for 60th, as he recorded two birdies and nine pars against five bogeys, a double and a triple. He scored the latter two in his first four holes to get to 5-over quickly, but settled down over the final 14 holes.
“Johnny had a rough start, but regrouped and then held it together pretty well for a bad start,” Edwards said. “For the most part, any time anyone made a mistake, they worked hard to make a bogey and nothing worse.”
Hayes certainly wasn’t alone in his struggles; the average score by the non-scorer for all 14 teams on Thursday was an 81.6; he actually tied for the fourth lowest as only three managed to break 80. Despite his troubles, he played the par-3 holes at a collective 1-under, tied for eighth best in the field.
Illinois freshman Charlie Danielson turned in the best round of the day to take the individual lead, as the 2012 Wisconsin state high school champion opened on the back nine and shot a 30, including five birdies over a seven hole span; he added two more birdies on the front side to finish with a 7-under 65. Freshmen dominated the top of the leaderboard Thursday, with Oklahoma State’s Jordan Niebrugge tied for second (67) and Illinois’ Thomas Detry fourth (68).
The field has been re-paired according to score for the second round; Colorado, the No. 10 seed here, will tee it up off the No. 1 tee beginning at 7:20 a.m. MDT with Kent State (No. 5 seed) and Arkansas (No. 2), who occupy the fourth and fifth spots ahead of the Buffs. The final round is set for a 7:50 a.m. start on Saturday.
CU media release
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Buff Golfers are hungry for NCAA championship
May 15th
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Colorado men’s golf team is back in the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2009, as the Buffaloes are ready to go in the Central/Fayetteville Regional which begins here Thursday.
Colorado, ranked No. 58 in the nation (GolfStat; No. 67 Golfweek) is the No. 10 seed in the field is looking to advance to the NCAA Championship Finals for the first time since 2002.
The Buffs have been idle since May 1, when they finished 10th at the Pac-12 Championships in Los Angeles. CU was in position for a first division (top six) finish, but had a disastrous final day that dropped it from seventh into 10th.
“We really haven’t practiced since the Pac-12 Championship,” said head coach Roy Edwards. “That is by design. These guys are students first and they had their semester projects and finals until (last) Thursday. So they were all in with those responsibilities. Now they can clearly and fully focus on the task at hand.
“We’re absolutely hungry to get back out there,” he continued. “We had a really odd weather month leading up to the Pac-12 Championships and couldn’t get in the kind of practice we needed, yet we were still in decent position for an upper division finish. Most of the guys got a solid competition round in for U.S. Open Local Qualifying (Monday) to get the rust off. They’re anxious to get out there and prove that the final round (at Pac-12’s) was a blip on the season.”
The four Buffs who have played in all 12 tournaments (38 rounds) this season, seniors Jason Burstyn andDerek Fribbs, sophomore David Oraee and freshman Philip Juel-Berg along with junior Johnny Hayes will represent Colorado in the regional. Only Fribbs, as an individual last year, and Hayes, with his former school Towson State in 2010, have played in the postseason before.
For the Buffaloes to have a chance to advance to the Finals, which run May 28-June 2 in Atlanta, its No. 1 golfer this season, Burstyn, needs to rebound from an uncharacteristic poor performance at the Pac-12s, where he just wasn’t able to get anything going; he tied for 66th with a 33-over score of 313. Edwards expects him to back to his old self.
“He was a little off, and he’s no different than most in that he needs to keep learning to adapt to different situations,” Edwards said of his team’s stroke average leader (72.8). “He normally does that, and in this case, I think he’s ready to move on. History shows that the few times he has played poorly, he’s bounced back to play really well. I don’t think it will be any different this week.”
As for the team to have overall success, he pointed to what the Buffaloes did when they won the Air Force Falcon Invitational last September and the Bandon Dunes Championship in March.
“We have to minimize our mistakes, the focus has to be on being as smart as possible,” he noted. “We haven’t seen the course yet, but I understand it’s very difficult. It’s an event where you don’t care if you finish first or fifth. We need to be patient, make good decisions and overall manage our individual games. When we’ve done that, we’ve played our best, and if we can do that here, we have a great shot at advancing to the Finals.”
“If we are disciplined in our decisions at all times we have a great shot. The five teams who make the least number of controllable mistakes will advance. This has more to do about us doing our job than anything else.”
Arkansas is the host school, with The Blessings Golf Club serving as the host course; BGC has a 7,251-yard, par-72 layout (37-35 configuration) that was designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. It opened in 2004, and its rating (79.1) and slope (153) makes it one of the most difficult courses in the U.S., as its topography is characterized by hilly terrain creating numerous sidehill lies, dramatic elevation changes, forced carries over ravines and valleys, and large, undulating Bent grass greens, with Clear Creek in play on several holes. The fairways/roughs are Zoysia.
Colorado will tee off at 8:10 a.m. (MDT) on Thursday off the No. 10 tee, with the Buffs paired with Indiana (No. 11 seed) and UNC-Wilmington (No. 12). The field will be re-paired according to score after the first and second rounds, with all tee times between 8:20 and 10:20 a.m. for the second round (Friday) and between 7:50 and 9:50 a.m. for the final round (Saturday).
The top five teams and top two individuals who are not members of those squads will advance to the NCAA Championship Finals, which are scheduled for May 28-June 2 in Atlanta, Ga.
David Plati
Associate AD/Sports Information
University of Colorado Buffaloes
357 UCB / Fieldhouse Annex #50
Boulder, CO 80309-0357
303/492-5626 (office)
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BUFF GOLFERS SLIP INTO SEVENTH AT PAC-12 CHAMPIONSHIPS
May 1st
Freshman Juel-Berg Continues To Lead Buffaloes
LOS ANGELES — The University of Colorado men’s golf team slipped a notch from a tie for sixth into one for seventh after a high-scoring third round saw team scores escalate as the Pac-12 Conference Championships head into the final day of competition Wednesday.
No. 1 California remained in the lead but saw it shrink from nine strokes down to two. The Bears own a 1,056 team score, 6-over par, which is just ahead of No. 3 and host UCLA (1,058), which shot one of the two low rounds for the day, a 4-over 354. No. 4 Washington held its third place position, but is well back of the leaders at 1,078; Arizona State used the other low round in the field to zoom into fourth (1,084), with No. 7 Stanford rounding out the top five (1,092).
The Buffaloes, ranked No. 60, didn’t have a great day, but didn’t shoot themselves out of a first division finish, either. Colorado turned in a 30-over par 380 score for a 1,110 overall total, which has it tied with No. 11 Southern California and No. 51 Oregon State.
All 12 schools shot over par – to the tune of a total of 235 strokes. Only three players in the field turned in under par rounds Tuesday, with just four others matching par as the average score in the 72-man field jumped from 73.29 in the first round to 74.69 in the third.
The Buffs collectively recorded just eight birdies Tuesday, with 58 pars, 39 bogeys, four doubles and a quadruple.
“The hole locations were much more difficult,” head coach Roy Edwards said. “It was really tough out there, really hard. This is a major championship test, and in fields like this on a course like this, it’s hard to play 72 holes straight without having some struggles. And everyone went through it, this is one of USC’s home courses and they’re dead even with us through three rounds. It’s just a big time challenge out there, but the truth is that it is very fair. The greens are very firm and very, very fast. This is a top 10 golf course in the world since they restored it three years ago.”
“I thought we did okay under the circumstances, and of course we wanted to play better,” Edwards added. “But we had way too many three-putts, my guess is somewhere around 20, 25. We were in pretty good spots for the most part, we only had a few bad approach shots, so for the most part things were in our control putting-wise. Much of the damage was early.”
CU’s six players were collectively 15-over par through just five holes, and also were 10-over the last three.
Freshman Philip Juel-Berg continued to pace the Buffaloes, though he shot a 7-over 77 in the third round; his 7-over 217 is tied for 20th on the 7,236-yard, par-70 Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course design. He had 11 pars and seven bogeys on his day, with his 39 pars tied for the most in the field and his 4.07 average on the par-4 holes is sixth best. Of the 16 freshmen in the field (including three redshirts), Juel-Berg is fifth among them heading into the last 18 holes.
Junior Johnny Hayes shot CU’s best round of the day, a 4-over 74, which gave him a 10-over 220 total that has him tied for 27th. He had two birdies, 10 pars and six bogeys for his round; he turned at 5-over but was one of the few players in the field to play either nine under par when he had both of his birds and just one bogey on the front side.
Senior Derek Fribbs turned in a 6-over 76 for a 221 score (11-over), as he had two birdies and eight pars against eight bogeys Wednesday. He was even though 10 holes but bogeyed six of the last eight holes coming into the clubhouse.
Fribbs and Juel-Berg have yet to have a score worse than a bogey.
Sophomore David Oraee fashioned a 5-over 75, which has him in as 12-over 222 for 54 holes; he had a birdie and 11 pars against six bogeys for his effort on the day. Like many of his teammates, he was over par early, in his case, 4-over seven holes in, but settled down and played the last 11 at just 1-over.
Redshirt freshman Drew Trujillo shot an 8-over 78 for a 233 score (23-over), as he had 10 pars against six bogeys and a double for the third round. Tied for 67th in the field, he opened with a double on No. 10 and then bogeyed the next three holes to stand 5-over just four holes in, but gathered himself to reel off eight straight pars.
Senior Jason Burstyn, CU’s No. 1 player and leader in stroke average (72.15), continued to struggle, though was playing a little better than he did Monday until he was derailed on his final hole of the day, the par-3 No. 9 where he scored a quadruple bogey after having some trouble in the bunker. He finished with a 9-over 79 for a 234 total (plus-24), which has him in 69th place entering the final round. He started the round well with a birdie, and had scored his third of the day right before the disaster on No. 9. Burstyn came into the meet with just one triple bogey in 34 rounds (and just three in 68 rounds dating to last year), but has had to endure a triple and a quad here this week.
Cal’s Max Homa is still riding his first round course record 61 and extended his individual lead to five strokes, as he shot a 71 in the third round for an 8-under 202. UCLA freshman Jonathan Garrick also shot a 71 for a 3-under 207 total, with four others six strokes back at 2-under 208.
The fourth and final round is set for Wednesday, with play beginning at 9 a.m. MDT off both the No. 1 and 10 tees; Colorado will be paired with USC and Oregon State and will begin play off the back nine on Wednesday in the first six groups to start the day.
“We’re hoping this was our ‘struggle’ round of the week and that we will finish strong and rebound Wednesday,” Edwards said.
NOTES: Through 54 holes, just six players are under par and two others at even … After six eagles were recorded on Monday, just one went into the books Tuesday … Fribbs (-4) and Hayes (-3) are two of just 18 players in the field to be more than 2-under par on the three par-5 holes … The Pac-12 Network will air highlights of the championship on Saturday, May 11, at Noon MDT.
LOS ANGELES — The University of Colorado men’s golf team slipped a notch from a tie for sixth into one for seventh after a high-scoring third round saw team scores escalate as the Pac-12 Conference Championships head into the final day of competition Wednesday.
No. 1 California remained in the lead but saw it shrink from nine strokes down to two. The Bears own a 1,056 team score, 6-over par, which is just ahead of No. 3 and host UCLA (1,058), which shot one of the two low rounds for the day, a 4-over 354. No. 4 Washington held its third place position, but is well back of the leaders at 1,078; Arizona State used the other low round in the field to zoom into fourth (1,084), with No. 7 Stanford rounding out the top five (1,092).
The Buffaloes, ranked No. 60, didn’t have a great day, but didn’t shoot themselves out of a first division finish, either. Colorado turned in a 30-over par 380 score for a 1,110 overall total, which has it tied with No. 11 Southern California and No. 51 Oregon State.
All 12 schools shot over par – to the tune of a total of 235 strokes. Only three players in the field turned in under par rounds Tuesday, with just four others matching par as the average score in the 72-man field jumped from 73.29 in the first round to 74.69 in the third.
The Buffs collectively recorded just eight birdies Tuesday, with 58 pars, 39 bogeys, four doubles and a quadruple.
“The hole locations were much more difficult,” head coach Roy Edwards said. “It was really tough out there, really hard. This is a major championship test, and in fields like this on a course like this, it’s hard to play 72 holes straight without having some struggles. And everyone went through it, this is one of USC’s home courses and they’re dead even with us through three rounds. It’s just a big time challenge out there, but the truth is that it is very fair. The greens are very firm and very, very fast. This is a top 10 golf course in the world since they restored it three years ago.”
“I thought we did okay under the circumstances, and of course we wanted to play better,” Edwards added. “But we had way too many three-putts, my guess is somewhere around 20, 25. We were in pretty good spots for the most part, we only had a few bad approach shots, so for the most part things were in our control putting-wise. Much of the damage was early.”
CU’s six players were collectively 15-over par through just five holes, and also were 10-over the last three.
Freshman Philip Juel-Berg continued to pace the Buffaloes, though he shot a 7-over 77 in the third round; his 7-over 217 is tied for 20th on the 7,236-yard, par-70 Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course design. He had 11 pars and seven bogeys on his day, with his 39 pars tied for the most in the field and his 4.07 average on the par-4 holes is sixth best. Of the 16 freshmen in the field (including three redshirts), Juel-Berg is fifth among them heading into the last 18 holes.
Junior Johnny Hayes shot CU’s best round of the day, a 4-over 74, which gave him a 10-over 220 total that has him tied for 27th. He had two birdies, 10 pars and six bogeys for his round; he turned at 5-over but was one of the few players in the field to play either nine under par when he had both of his birds and just one bogey on the front side.
Senior Derek Fribbs turned in a 6-over 76 for a 221 score (11-over), as he had two birdies and eight pars against eight bogeys Wednesday. He was even though 10 holes but bogeyed six of the last eight holes coming into the clubhouse.
Fribbs and Juel-Berg have yet to have a score worse than a bogey.
Sophomore David Oraee fashioned a 5-over 75, which has him in as 12-over 222 for 54 holes; he had a birdie and 11 pars against six bogeys for his effort on the day. Like many of his teammates, he was over par early, in his case, 4-over seven holes in, but settled down and played the last 11 at just 1-over.
Redshirt freshman Drew Trujillo shot an 8-over 78 for a 233 score (23-over), as he had 10 pars against six bogeys and a double for the third round. Tied for 67th in the field, he opened with a double on No. 10 and then bogeyed the next three holes to stand 5-over just four holes in, but gathered himself to reel off eight straight pars.
Senior Jason Burstyn, CU’s No. 1 player and leader in stroke average (72.15), continued to struggle, though was playing a little better than he did Monday until he was derailed on his final hole of the day, the par-3 No. 9 where he scored a quadruple bogey after having some trouble in the bunker. He finished with a 9-over 79 for a 234 total (plus-24), which has him in 69th place entering the final round. He started the round well with a birdie, and had scored his third of the day right before the disaster on No. 9. Burstyn came into the meet with just one triple bogey in 34 rounds (and just three in 68 rounds dating to last year), but has had to endure a triple and a quad here this week.
Cal’s Max Homa is still riding his first round course record 61 and extended his individual lead to five strokes, as he shot a 71 in the third round for an 8-under 202. UCLA freshman Jonathan Garrick also shot a 71 for a 3-under 207 total, with four others six strokes back at 2-under 208.
The fourth and final round is set for Wednesday, with play beginning at 9 a.m. MDT off both the No. 1 and 10 tees; Colorado will be paired with USC and Oregon State and will begin play off the back nine on Wednesday in the first six groups to start the day.
“We’re hoping this was our ‘struggle’ round of the week and that we will finish strong and rebound Wednesday,” Edwards said.
NOTES: Through 54 holes, just six players are under par and two others at even … After six eagles were recorded on Monday, just one went into the books Tuesday … Fribbs (-4) and Hayes (-3) are two of just 18 players in the field to be more than 2-under par on the three par-5 holes … The Pac-12 Network will air highlights of the championship on Saturday, May 11, at Noon MDT.
