The Valparaiso University men's golf team made a 16-stroke improvement from Monday's round as the Beacons closed out Wisconsin's Badger Invitational at the par-72, 7286-yard University Ridge course in Madison, Wis. on Tuesday. Senior Elliot Lee (Tillamook, Ore. / Tillamook) posted the team's best Round-3 score.
 
How It Happened

• Lee led the team with a 72 (E), a 12-stroke improvement from his Monday round. He teed off from Hole 18 and had back-to-back bogeys, then shot par or better on 16 straight holes to close out the tournament.
• Freshman Tyler Samaan (Elgin, Ill. / Burlington) boasted the team's best score for the tournament, finishing tied for 65^th of 100 at 223. He finished the tournament with a 4-over 76 on Tuesday
• Junior Rob Politza (Lemont, Ill. / Lemont Township) and redshirt senior Ryan Somerville (Aurora, Ontario / Aurora) tied for 73^rd at 224 for the tournament, tying for second on the team. Somerville's 74 was Valpo's second-best 18-hole score on Tuesday, highlighted by an eagle on the par-5 16^th, his final hole of the round. Somerville played his final eight holes of the tournament at four under.  
• The team bounced back from a shaky second round with a 297 in Round 3, finishing 18^th and beating out Oakland by five strokes. Southern Miss won the tournament at 841 and had the individual medalist in Jake Moffitt at 202 (-14).

Thoughts From Head Coach Dave Gring
"In our team meeting last night prior to our final round today, we talked about having a quality 'bounce-back' round for each player and playing with resolve and school pride. As I expected, the team did exactly that after the poor second round, with each one of our players having a better round today. It could have been easy for the guys to stick their head in the sand and be miserable. Conversely, they played with determination and excellent focus all day. Ryan, Elliot and Adam finished with their best rounds of the tournament. We still have a lot that we need to work on, especially with accuracy off the tee and being sharper around the greens with our chipping and putting."
 
"We had an awful lot of 3-putts today, so our speed was poor on our first putts and that cost us a number of shots in our team total. We had two of our players with over four shots lost in today's rounds in strokes gained putting, and we had two more with over three shots lost in strokes gained putting. That's a remarkable amount of precious shots lost, especially after hitting a decent amount of fairways and greens in regulation. The golf course offers a lot of large greens, but we need to do better in shot proximity to the hole and simply getting 2-putt greens, when we have putts over 30 feet. We're going to have a number of days prior to this weekend to put some quality work into our accuracy off the tee and short game, since our tournament this coming weekend is a lot more of the same – narrow fairways, big greens and terrific green complexes."
 
Up Next
The Beacons will return to the course on Monday, Oct. 5 for the Kemper Lakes Invitational, hosted by Belmont at Kemper Lakes GC in Kildeer, Ill. A link to live scoring via Clippd will be available on ValpoAthletics.com.