After a hot start, Bradley’s men’s golf team finished 11th at the 12-team Butler Spring Invitational on March 28-29 at Highland Golf and Country Club in Indiana. Junior Josh Kirkham led the Braves once again with his sixth top-20 finish of the season.
The team had a great first day of the 36-hole competition, finishing the first round in fifth place out of the 12 teams competing, but could not keep the pace during the final round. Valparaiso won the team title by six strokes at 569 over the host of the tournament Butler, who finished with 575. Morehead State rounded out the top three with a score of 576.
Bradley shot 307 as a team on Tuesday, dropping to 11th in the team standings at 598. However, the Braves matched the 11th-best, 36-hole team score in program history.
Head coach Jeff Roche was pleased with the mindset of his golfers and hopes the team can keep building off of their past learnings.
“Aside from the second round, you can kind of see things starting to move in the right direction,” Roche said. “What we did that first round, you have to get to that first before you can continue to do it. Across the board, all the guys kept playing a little bit better than what they have been.”
Kirkham, firing a four-over-par 74 on the final day, finished one shot short of the top 10 with a 36 hole score of 143, which was four strokes behind individual tri-medalists James Hill from Detroit Mercy, Anthony Delisanti from Valparaiso and Luke Armbrust from Illinois, the latter being the brother of Braves junior Nick Armbrust.
Roche is thankful to have a consistent player like Kirkham to exemplify what the team can accomplish with hard work.
“To have Josh [Kirkham] there and the rest of the team be able to see what is possible, I think it helps and it makes it easier for me to kind of focus on some other guys as well, knowing that Josh is up there,” Roche said.
Another key golfer for the Braves last week was graduate transfer Aaeri Krishnan, who finished tied for 27th overall at 147. He was two strokes away from earning his third top-20 finish this season, after posting a season-best one-over 71 in Monday’s opening round.
“It felt good to get [a] 71 in,” Krishnan said. “It [has] been a while since I had that round, but I think the biggest thing that I was proud of was that I did that without having my best game, without my “A” game. That is one of the biggest things: that me, coach and the other guys have been working on. [There were] cold and tough conditions and we still stuck out and grinded it out. I was proud of everyone on the team too.”
A second-round 77 placed the Braves’ Armbrust in 61st with 152, whereas classmate Roy Radke finished tied for 85th at 156. Sophomore Brady Kreiter tied for 88th at 157, with a 76 in the first round.
As an individual, junior John Stillman obtained the low round of his career with a 72 in the final round, which helped him move up 31 spots in the standings into a tie for 43rd with a 149.
Roche highlighted Stillman’s performance after a solid second round.
“It was really good, John [Stillman] kind of held to the things we talked about, you can’t really control score, control the controllable, run your process, and he did that better than he has done the whole year,” Roche said.
Bradley will have a week off before returning to action on April 11-12 in Omaha, Nebraska, at the Stampede at the Creek; the team’s final outing before the MVC Championship in late April.
