Columbus High leads after opening round of Hardaway Invitational
The Columbus High golf team fought blustery winds and posted the first-round lead Friday among 21 teams vying for victory in the 41st annual Larry Gaither Hardaway Invitational golf tournament at Bull Creek Golf Course.
Led by junior Nolan Miller’s 3-under-par 69, the Blue Devils posted a score of 295, two strokes lower than the first-round total of the visiting team from Boiling Springs, S.C.
“The team got off to a little bit of a shaky start over the first few holes,” said CHS golf Coach Chris Parker. “They looked a little nervous, but they settled down … In fact, four of them each shot even par on their back nine.”
It would have been easy for some to engage in a “pity party” when things didn’t start well in their rounds, he said, but they buckled down and played steady golf that put them in the top spot after day one.
“I’m real proud of that score in these conditions,” Parker said of the 295.
Miller, whose only blemish on his card was a bogey on the par-3 17th hole on the East Course, said the winds made the course play particularly tough.
“I hit the ball low, which kind of gave me a bit of an advantage,” he said. “I didn’t really have any errant shots. And the course was perfect, with the greens rolling good.”
Miller heads into the second and final round with a one-stroke lead over Boiling Springs’ Trent Phillips and two strokes over Woodward Academy’s George Stradtman in the contest for medalist in the tournament.
Columbus High won the Hardaway in 2013 and 2014, but saw Etowah County emerge the victor in 2015. Etowah opened with a score of 312 on Friday.
The par-72 course was in “awesome shape,” said Hardaway coach Stephen Campbell, host of the event. Especially considering it absorbed more than 4 inches of rain just seven days ago that had the course closed for days as the watershed lakes overflowed, inundating the bridges and fairways and damaging bunkers throughout the course.
“Our guys did a great job getting the course back in shape,” said John Milam, director of golf at the 36-hole facility. “They’re used to it happening and they know how to do it. They’ve got it down to a science.”
Campbell said that because of some areas of wet grounds and mud, the players were allowed to lift, clean and place their balls, but the 15-20 mile per hour winds still made the scoring difficult.
The second round of the tournament begins at 8 a.m. today, with the final group of teams starting at 2:30 p.m. All will play from shotgun starts.
This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 9:54 PM with the headline "Columbus High leads after opening round of Hardaway Invitational."