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FHSU Growing Accustomed to Top of Leaderboard
By David Boyce
The climb junior Nick Hague has made to be part of Fort Hays State “A” golf team mirrors the dramatic improvement of the program itself.
During the fall, Hague, a junior college transfer from Hutchinson Community College, played in just one of the four tournaments and that was on the “B” team.
Second-year coach Brad Jordan knew Hague had a much better game than he was showing.
After all, Hague was Jordan’s first recruit. And Jordan wanted to put together a team that challenged the top teams in the MIAA instead of scoring near the bottom.
Two weeks ago it all came together for Hague and the Fort Hays golf program.
Hague shot an even par 72 on the second day of the tournament and finished tied for second in the Win Pasta House Invitational in Springfield, Mo., on March 15-16.
More importantly, his score helped Fort Hays erase a nine-stroke deficit from the first day and win the tournament, topping Southwest Baptist.
“It was pretty exciting we won,” Hague said. “That was the most important thing.”
The tournament win was significant for the Fort Hays golf program. As far as Jordan can figure, it was Fort Hays’ first tournament win since 1992.
The Tigers then proved on Monday that they have depth and what they did in mid March wasn’t a fluke.
Fort Hays once again took first in the two-day Missouri Western Invitational. Hague had a so-so performance. The Tigers used his score of 77 on Sunday, but didn’t use his 80 on Monday.
“He had some putting woes today,” Jordan said. “He hit the ball well, but the greens were really tricky.
“He started the day with a four putt, and that just rattles your cage a little bit. It’s difficult to come back from something like that when it’s your second hole.”
Fort Hays won its second straight tournament because golfers like sophomore Markus Hilger, junior Kevin Quinley and junior Adam Gorjiyan came through with good scores.
Hilger shot 72 and 75 and finished in second place. Quinley and Gorjiyan finished tied for third with a two-day total of 149.
“Our team has a lot more talent than what we showed on paper in the fall,” Hilger said. “We should do better now that we are starting to click.
“We can be as good as we want to be. Every one of us has the potential to shoot low at anytime. We just got to put it all together, and so far we’ve done that.”
It’s created a completely different mindset for the team.
“We were always kind of the cellar dwellers,” Jordan said. “Now we have some confidence and instead of talking about beating one team not to get last, we are talking about beating all teams to get first. It’s a completely different attitude.”
In the four fall tournaments, Fort Hays placed 10th, 14th, tied for 6th and 9th.
Jordan attributes a lot of the early-season success to playing in the Palma Del Mar Intercollegiate tournament on March 10 in Humacao, Puerto Rico.
The golfers had to work hard raising money for the trip because the only thing the Fort Hays athletic program was paying was the entry fee. The golfers had to raise money for the flight, the lodging and the food.
Jordan was proud of the effort the golfers put in to raise money for the trip. So instead of sitting around in cold snowy Kansas in early March, the Tigers were in a warm climate, playing competitive golf against good teams.
“We played golf for five days and that gave us a jump on everybody for spring because we got to play when nobody else could,” Jordan said.
The Tigers now have a couple of weeks of practice before they
return to action April 12-13 for the Missouri Southern Spring
Invitational, and after that tournament will be the three-day MIAA
Championships April 18-20 in Kansas City.
To reach David Boyce, contributing writer for the MIAA, e-mail
dboyce@themiaa.com.
