Scoring three under par on the second day of the boys golf state championship, junior Alex Lee finished 13th individually with a total score of 148 on Oct. 19.
“I couldn’t ask for a better ball striking day,” said Lee. “I was hitting fairway after fairway, green after green … But putting-wise, my putting was just not there, and I couldn’t score how I wanted to that day.”
According to head coach Justin Gerbich, Lee had a few bad putts and a couple of bad breaks, but his irons were phenomenal and he consistently hit the ball close.
Lee qualified for state by finishing third at sectionals with a score of 71 on Oct. 7. The team tied Conant and York for fifth place with a score of 303.
“We should be down there as a team next year,” said Gerbich. “We’re gonna be pretty good. You just, you gotta hit every shot. You gotta, you know, grind and not give up, because you don’t know if [the team is] gonna need your score.”
As of Oct. 19, the Spartans (7-2, 4-1) were led in scoring by Lee, who averaged just over 66 strokes across 18-hole games.
“We just, we just didn’t play well,” said Gerbich. “And, you know, part of it is we, I mean, we shot a 303. And that’s a pretty good score, and a lot of years that would make it to state, but we happen to be in a really hard sectional. So that happens in golf sometimes.”