The Valparaiso University men's golf team played the first round and the majority of the second round on Monday to begin the Bluegrass Collegiate Invitational, hosted by Kentucky at the par-71, 7013-yard Big Blue Course in Lexington, Ky. There was a morning weather delay that led to darkness falling before the teams completed the second round.
 
How It Happened

• Redshirt junior Ryan Somerville (Aurora, Ontario / Aurora) led the team by shooting five over for the day through 34 holes. He is tied for 19^th of 92 on the player leaderboard. Somerville tied for the team lead with a 75 in Round 1.
• Senior Owen Sander (Carmel, Ind. / Carmel) shared the team lead in the opening round with a 75. He is at +8 (t-34) for the tournament with two holes left in Round 2. His second round was highlighted by an eagle on the par-5 seventh hole.
• Sophomore Rob Politza (Lemont, Ill. / Lemont Township) is third on the team for the tournament at t-57 overall with a score of +12 including a Round-1 of 76, one stroke back of the team's best opening-round score.
• Valpo's Round-1 team score was 304, and the Beacons are tied for 11^th of 17 with a team score of +36 through one day of action.
• Host Kentucky leads the tournament at -3 with Cameron Phillips of Kentucky and Haden Maxwell of Tennessee Tech tied atop the player leaderboard at two under.

Thoughts from Head Coach Dave Gring
"We had a challenging start to the first round this morning. We knew that we were starting on the most difficult part of the golf course. Add to that the rain and wind conditions that we really haven't seen at all this entire spring season, and we had our hands full. Once we got through the first half dozen holes and past the rain delay, the guys settled into their playing rhythm and we played the last two-thirds of the first round much better. We still have our battles with too many double bogeys and losing shots on the greens with too many 3-putts. We still need to avoid the very wayward shots and reduce the variance in our miss hit shots."
 
"Tomorrow, we are going to have to play the Par-3 holes much better. They are four of the most challenging that we will see all year in a round, and they really got the best of us today. With careful management of the shots on those holes, we can play them a lot more effectively. We are also going to have to get better proximity to the hole with our approach shots. The wind made that challenging today, but we need to play better in those conditions."
 
Up Next
Round 2 will resume at 8 a.m. CT / 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday with players rolling into the third and final round with the same groups. A link to live scoring via Clippd is available on ValpoAthletics.com.