Golf: Greens leave Knights seeing red in loss to South Carrroll, Smithsburg

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

                         

On paper, the Middletown High School Knights Golf team loss to the Smithsburg High School Leopards and the South Carroll High School Cavaliers at a tri-match on Monday August 22^nd doesn’t look good. Losing to two teams that didn’t qualify for the 2015 Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association 1A-2A Golf State Tournament would never be considered a good thing, as would any loss.

But, after the match the mood amongst Middletown’s golfers was surprisingly relaxed for the immediate aftermath of a loss. After each of the six golfers discussed their rounds the unanimous opinion, not just from Middletown’s golfers but Smithsburg’s and South Carroll’s as well was that South Carroll’s home course, The Links at Challedon Golf Course, was playing tough.

In this case, tough would probably be a severe understatement. Challedon simply chewed up and spit out three golf teams with absolutely no remorse for their scores or well-beings in the Middletown loss by a score of 178-168 (South Carroll)-176.

A perfect world, would have had a soft playing course with friendly lies and easy bounces helping to ease the rust off of the three teams, with Smithsburg and Middletown having played only one match so far this season and South Carroll making their season debut.

Instead Challedon kicked the rust off of most golfers with an infuriating mix of fairways that seemed to bounce and roll ad nauseum and greens that were either too fast or too slow but never similar allowing the players to adjust to them.

The scores seem to illustrate this challenge as the lowest team score, South Carroll’s 168, averages out to an average player score of 42 for the front 9, or just a casual +6 on the front nine. Out of the twelve players who were in the top four for each respective school, only two shot rounds at or below par with Smithsburg’s Brett Baile coming in with a 33 and South Carroll’s Ryan Stankewicz putting up an even par 36.

To be fair to the course, the golfing quality wasn’t the greatest from either of the teams. There were plenty of chip shots skulled over the green and tee shots hooked out of bounds with a heavy driver shot but that’s too be expected with August golf as most teams are not only trying to warm up to the courses but get a feel for who the main four are going to be in the lineup.

From the Middletown perspective it was a disappointing day as none of the Knights’ golfers scored under 40 but for all it wasn’t the Middletown side still had some bright moments especially from the clubs of senior Robbie Houck.

After posting a 47 in Middletown’s first tri-match on the 19^th of August, Houck would rebound with a good round, shooting what could best be described as a misleading 44, with Houck having been just a couple fluky bounces and bad lips away from shooting a score that would’ve probably clipped 40 if not dipping down into the high 30’s.

The quality of Houck’s round was evident in the fact that while most people on the course picked up bogies and double bogies after ripping shots out of bounds, most of Houck’s came from struggling to put on greens that almost everyone struggled with on the day.

Asked after the match whether the greens had an effect Houck, to the point said, “Yes, they were tough.”

Middletown, though will need to make a quick turnaround from this match is the Knights will head up to Black Rock Golf Course in Washington County on Wednesday August 24^th to take on Brunswick and Boonsboro in another tri-match. More importantly for the Knights, Black Rock is home to the District 1 Tournament which is how the Knights will attempt to qualify for states in a month.