The men’s golf team secured a fourth-place finish at the Golden Nugget Invitational while Preston DeFriend finished 12th individually.

DeFriend, junior from Lubbock, carded his best performance of his junior campaign so far, ending the week 7-under par. His final round was a career best 4-under par.

“The course was more forgiving, which helped me out,” DeFriend said. “ I’ve been struggling this year driving the ball, so it was a good tournament to get more comfortable off the tee.”

The Wildcats took advantage of the par five holes, ending the tournament 30-under par and leading the field. In addition to the success on Par fives, the ‘Cats found 64 birdies over three rounds, good for the third-most in the field.

“We’ve always preached the importance of par fives,” Shaw said. “We have length on this team. We have firepower. Every week we have to really take care of business on par fives.”

Shaw took six players, with Nicholas Blalock, senior from McGregor, competing individually. Colin Leonard, sophomore from San Angelo, also delivered his best finish of the season, ending 6-under par and in 17th.

“It was a racetrack of a golf course,” Shaw said. “You had to make a lot of birdies to keep up, and we did for the most part. A couple of teams got ahead of us and put down the accelerator. We couldn’t quite keep pace with them, but I thought all six guys really did some good things.”

Lamar University secured the tournament victory on its home course. UT San Antonio and Tarleton State University finished narrowly behind at 38-under par and 36-under par, respectively.

“Birdies are good,” Shaw said. “These days with men’s college golf, you’re playing courses that demand birdies. You just have to, or else you’ll get lapped. We didn’t want to get lapped, so we’ve always had a team that makes a lot of birdies.”

Shaw also said that while the birdies helped the team finish fourth, eliminating mistakes and high-score holes will allow it to take another step forward in the future.

“It’s eliminating the other things that will probably propel us to another level,” Shaw said. “It’s how many guys do we walk, it’s how many bogeys and doubles do we make to kind of take away the advantages of making birdies. This week we had way more birdies than anything else, and that was encouraging.”

The team will have a brief break while campus is closed for spring break, before competing in the All-American Intercollegiate, hosted by the University of Houston on March 16-17. While the Power Four tournament is the team’s next chance to compete, DeFriend said it’s all about building for the Western Athletic Conference tournament in late April.

“Everything we focus on leads more towards conference, rather than week by week,” DeFriend said. “We focus on what we need to do well when it matters most… We’ve got a really strong team this year.”