The Valparaiso University men's golf team received a balanced effort on Wednesday's final day of the Golfweek/Stifel Spring Challenge, held at the par-72, 6970-yard True Blue Golf Course in Pawleys Island, S.C. The four counting scores in the third and final round all fell between 72 and 74 for the Beacons, while individual Owen Sander (Carmel, Ind. / Carmel) had the best score of any player on the team.
 
How It Happened

• The top score by a Beacon in Round 3 came from Sander, who golfed as an individual and turned in a 69 (-3), tying a career best. He improved by nine strokes from Round 2 to Round 3, finishing the tournament at t-41 with a 218 (+2). He reached par or better on 16 of Wednesday's 18 holes including a half a dozen birdies.
• Sophomore Adam Melliere (Zionsville, Ind. / Zionsville) led the team for the second straight day, turning in a 72 (E), the lone Valpo player to card par or better in Round 3. His performance closed out the three-day tournament with a 54-hole total of 217 (+1), tied for 33^rd in a 93-player field. He climbed nine places on the player leaderboard in the final round.
• Senior Anthony Delisanti (Sanborn, N.Y. / Niagara) led the team for the tournament, finishing his week with a 73 (+1) on Wednesday. His 54-hole score of 210 (-6) put him tied for eighth in the competitive field. This marked Delisanti's sixth top-10 finish this season and the 26^th of his career.
• Sophomore Elliot Lee (Tillamook, Ore. / Tillamook) and senior Sam Booth (Carmel, Ind. / Carmel) also had their best round of the week on Wednesday, posting scores of 73 and 74, respectively.
• Valpo placed 11^th of 17 on the team leaderboard, beating USC Upstate, SIUE, Fairleigh Dickinson, Long Island, Southern Indiana and Kansas City. The Beacons posted a Round-3 score of 292 (+4) to finish the event at 869 (+5).
• St. John's won the tournament at 841, while Ryley Heath of Jacksonville State took medalist honors at 203.

Thoughts from Head Coach Dave Gring
"As a coach, I need to be careful not to get too caught up just in positive takeaways from a given tournament and pay little attention to the areas that our team needs to really improve to have better results. Our guys are playing hard in competition, they are putting in the effort and not showing poor attitudes during rounds that don't go their way. I'm grateful for all of that. We continue to show progress in single individual scores during our tournaments, but we need to see more consistency in all three rounds. We still haven't seen multiple players have subpar rounds for a given round, but we're getting closer."
 
"We simply haven't seen hardly any good tourney days from the entire team with our putting. Our tournaments have three rounds for five players and we might have a handful of rounds where we putted very well. The speed of our putts has been poor all spring, and we have to figure that out. We've basically played on Bermuda grass all spring, but we've played on a lot of courses with good quality greens. Also, our wedges into greens 75 to 150 yards is still not anywhere close to where it needs to be. We have to improve our proximity and give ourselves more chances for birdies. Lastly, our Par-5 scoring still has to get better. We haven't been close to the top 25 percent of the field in Par-5 scoring all year, so there's more opportunities to score out there."
 
"Today we had another solid day out of Adam in our fifth spot in the lineup. He hit 15 greens and 10 fairways in regulation, making three birdies and 12 pars. Owen had a solid tournament, playing in our individual spot. His stat line was almost identical to Adam today, but he had 29 putts and six birdies. Our birdie production was the best for the three days today with the team making 24 birdies total. We will get back to work and look forward to the next opportunity to compete this weekend."
 
Up Next
Valpo will continue a busy week of competition on Saturday at Indiana's Hoosier Collegiate at Pfau Course in Bloomington. A link to live scoring will be available on ValpoAthletics.com.