April 27, 2005
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MIZZOU at the 2005 Big 12 Conference Men's Golf Championships
Friday-Sunday, April 29-May 1, 2005
Whispering Pines GC - Trinity, Texas * Par 72 - 7,330 yards
TIGER MEN TAKE HEAD FULL OF STEAM SOUTH TO BIG 12 TOURNEY
The Missouri men's golf team, fresh off back-to-back team tournament titles, continues its quest for an NCAA Regional berth this weekend at the 2005 Big 12 Conference Championships, held at the Whispering Pines Golf Course in Trinity, Texas. All 12 teams will compete for the league's automatic berth to the NCAA Regional Championships, which will go to the conference champion.
For the first time this spring, and just the third time all season for MU, the three rounds of play will be conducted on three separate days (Friday-Sunday).
MIZZOU'S ONE OF THE HOTTEST TEAMS COMING IN
Nearly left for dead from the perspective of regional-qualifying status coming into the month, the Tigers are instead coming into the Lone-Star State as one of the hottest teams of late.
Mizzou's streak started at the beginning of April, when the Tigers won the Belmont Invitational for their first tournament title in a year and a half. It was also MU's first spring tournament win since 1995. The Tigers were buoyed by a 1-2 finish from junior Chris Mabry and sophomore Shawn Jasper, who each fired a school-record-shattering 63 in the first round of the tournament at Franklin, Tenn.
Two weeks later in West Lafayette, Ind., the Tigers repeated the feat by capturing the Boilermaker Invitational title, beating five teams that were ranked ahead of them - including top-25 squads Minnesota and host Purdue.
ROUTE `63' PUTS TIGERS OFF BEATEN PATH
Talk to most mid-Missourians about 63, and they'll likely point you in the direction of U.S. 63, the main North-South route that splits the state and skirts Columbia. Applied to the Tiger men's golf team, though, 63 is the new single-round school record, set earlier this month. As rare a score as it is, though, it was common enough for two Tigers - sophomore Shawn Jasper and junior Chris Mabry - to shoot 8-under-par rounds of 63 in the same round to open the Belmont Invitational.
Thanks to research from CU shot guru Dave Plati, it's the lowest teammates have ever gone in the same round in Big 12 history.
That said, Jasper and Mabry are the fourth and fifth Big 12 players this season to shoot 63. The others are Ben Kern from Kansas State, Colorado's Edward McGlasson and Andrew Price of Kansas. Price's round was 9-under-par, McGlasson, Mabry and Jasper were 8-under, and Kern's was 6-under on Stanford's par-69 course during The Nelson last October.
The lowest round in Big 12 history - both on score and total under par - was a 10-under 62 shot by Oklahoma State's Hunter Mahan during the 2002 U.S. Collegiate.
SCOTT IS ACE IN THE HOLE
Junior Ben Scott canned a hole-in-one on Feb. 15, during the first round of the Matlock Collegiate Classic in Lakeland, Fla. Scott aced the 205-yard 14th hole with a 3-iron. That propelled him to co-medalist honors, making him the first Tiger to win a tournament since Mark McBride in 2001, and the first spring medalist since John Utley in 1990.
The Florida hole-in-one was Scott's second in as many years; he also netted one at the 2004 Roadrunner Intercollegiate at UT-San Antonio.
KELLY NAMED TO ACADEMIC ALL-BIG 12 TEAM
Sophomore John Kelly has been named to the Academic All-Big 12 First Team, league officials announced earlier this week. Kelly, a business major from St. Louis, has the fifth-best stroke average on the team this season at 74.7.
HEAD COACH Mark Leroux
Mark Leroux, who led Austin Peay to three consecutive NCAA Regional Tournament appearances, is nearing the end of his first season at the helm of the Mizzou men's program.
Leroux comes to Columbia after serving seven seasons as head men's golf coach -- as well as the final six leading the women's program -- at APSU. While in Clarksville, Leroux elevated the Governors back to conference and regional prominence, leading the Govs to three straught Ohio Valley Conference Championships and the school's first three NCAA Regional appearances, beginning in 2001. Leroux earned back-to-back OVC Coach-of-the-Year honors in 2002 and 2003.
TIGERS IN TRAINING
Three Tennessee prep golf standouts - Peter Malnati (Dandridge, Tenn.), Ryne Fisher (Clarksville, Tenn.), and Bud Reynolds (Knoxville, Tenn.) - have signed National Letters of Intent to enroll at the University of Missouri and play golf next season as part of Mark Leroux's first recruiting class.
All three are ranked among the top 100 golfers in last year's Golfweek/Titleist Junior Rankings. Malnati was ranked 50th, Fisher 71st and Reynolds 92nd.
Malnati tied for 35th at the prestigious AJGA Polo Golf Junior Classic, and was recognized as one of only 10 members of the 2004 HP Scholastic Junior All-America Team. He won two junior tournaments last summer: the Signal Mountain Junior Invitational in late June, which included a second-round 66; and the Craig Goodman Rudolph Memorial Junior Invitational in late July. He had seven other top-five finishes.
Fisher had five top-five finishes in his 14 tournaments last summer, including a runner-up showing at the Westfield PGA Junior Section Championship in Tennessee in late June. He also was third behind Malnati at the Craig Goodman Rudolph Memorial Junior Invitational in late July, and parlayed a first-round 64 - which tied the second-lowest round in the entire AJGA season - into a fourth-place finish at the AJGA Burgett H. Mooney, Jr. Rome Classic in Georgia.
Reynolds has finished second and sixth in the last two Tennessee Class AAA state high-school championships. His best junior finish last summer was a fourth-place finish at the Bobby Chapman in early September.