Sports > April 26, 2007

By Martin Rickman | Staff writer

Despite a solid seventh place finish from junior Chris McCartin, the Wake Forest men’s golf team struggled to finish eighth at the ACC Championship in New London, N.C.

The team, playing without sophomore Dustin Groves’s score on the final day due to a self disqualification, was never able to build any lasting momentum, and ended the tournament with its worst finish since 1999.

McCartin discussed Groves’s disqualification, explaining, “Dustin was disqualified because of the one ball rule. You’re only allowed to play one type of ball per round and Dustin switched from a Pro-V1 to a Pro-V1X in the middle of the round.”

“He didn’t catch it until it was too late so he did the right thing and disqualified himself.”

The Deacs were paced by McCartin, who followed a first round 74 and second round 73 with a final round 67, good for seventh place. He was just one shot out of a tie for fifth. He finished as the only Deacon under par for the tournament at -2.

McCartin talked about his performance, saying, “I played solid the whole week and the first two days were filled with missed opportunities. I really could have scored better those two days but I made too many mistakes. The reason I seem to play well (at the ACC’s) is that I am comfortable over all the shots during the round and the course fits my eye. Also, one of my strengths is driving the ball well and if you can hit a lot of fairways out there you will have a lot of looks at birdies.”

Behind McCartin was a strong 19th place finish from senior Sean Moore, who finished 19th at 2-over.

Behind Moore was junior Webb Simpson at +5 in 33rd and freshman Brendan Gielow, who followed his first round 1-under with a pair of 77s, placing 40th at +9.

Simpson, coming off his first collegiate win at the U.S. Collegiate Championship in Alpharetta, Ga., and a selection to the U.S. Palmer Cup Team, was never able to catch fire, shooting par on the first day and finishing the tournament with a 75 and a 74. Talking about the team’s mentality, McCartin said, “The team is fine. If you look at the past two years we have followed this similar pattern of having a solid spring with a bad ACC Tournament for some reason and then we go on to do very well in Regionals so we plan to do that again. Of course we would like to do better at the ACCs, but us not doing well there isn’t anything new and we plan on three-peating at Regionals.”

As to the time in between now and the NCAA Regionals, the team is setting its sights on finals.

“We will first get caught up on school work and make sure we finish the year strong academically and when that is all over we can have all of our attention focused on golf,” McCartin said. “Wake isn’t a push-over school when it is done and we have nothing else to worry about but golf it will be scary to see how good we could be. All of us know we are a better team than we just showed-so we are anxious to get to Regionals so we can prove that to everyone else.”

The Deacs will have a chance to prove this once again, hoping to win for the third consecutive year at the NCAA East Regional May 17-19.