Playing poorly one week and winning the next isn’t such a bad tradeoff. As they say, winning cures everything.
After finishing in sixth place and 18 strokes off the lead in last week’s John A. Burns Invitational, the Arizona men’s golf team (6-under-par) dismantled the field en route to winning this week’s Braveheart Classic by 20 strokes over second-place Long Beach State University (14-over-par).
To cap off a flawless week of play, UA junior Tarquin MacManus claimed his first individual victory of the season, the second of his career as he finished at (6-under-par) for the tournament, including a 66 (6-under-par) in the final round.
“”The greens were tricky,”” MacManus said. “”Its just one of those things where you have to hit as many fairways and greens as you can and a few puts will fall. Scoring was tough out there.””
Arizona added two more players in the top 5, as Rich Saferian (2-under-par) and Jonathan Khan (even) finished in third and fourth, respectively. Both have been playing well of late. Saferian won the Arizona Intercollegiate, and Khan was UA’s second-leading scorer in the Burns Invitational, the team’s two most recent tournaments.
The finish matched the highest of Khan’s career, and it was the second top-5 finish for Saferian this season.
“”I just played pretty solid and didn’t make any big mistakes,”” said Khan, a junior from Tucson’s Salpointe Catholic high school. “”Last week in Hawaii we didn’t play very well and we wanted to come out and change that. We’re going to Vegas next week so we wanted to play well going into that because it’s a pretty tough field.””
Arizona will continue the spring season from March 12-14, as it takes part in the Southern Highlands Collegiate Championship, an event hosted by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.