The spring season is now in full swing for the Longwood men’s golf team, with the squad coming off a third-place finish at the Lonnie Barton Invitational in Florida on March 5 and a sixth-place finish at the Pinehurst Intercollegiate in North Carolina on March 10. These finishes come about despite missing days due to weather.
Head coach Kevin Fillman, ahead of the Lonnie Barton Invitational earlier this month, was concerned about the potential chance of unpredictable weather circumstances and the challenge of competing on unfamiliar grounds.
“The big difference is we’re playing on Bermuda grass, which is the first time that we’ve seen it since the fall," he noted. “It’s always good to go down where you know there are good temperatures and some good weathers. It is always extremely windy there, but that is something that you have to deal with.”
Ahead of their first invitational, Fillman noted his familiarity to the tournament, and with playing at the Lonnie Barton Invitational year after year comes increased experience, which gave the Lancers an unwritten advantage.
“We’ve had a lot of success in this particular tournament in the last 10 or 12 years, we’ve done well in the tournament traditionally.”
The unpredictable weather has ended up causing a few minor setbacks for the Lancers to start their spring, as senior Jordan Boulton noted. The team was able to compete in the qualifying rounds to start off their previous two weekends, but both Saturday rounds were rained out. However, despite these erroneous circumstances, the Mansfield, England native said the time they've had to put in extra practice has been a great morale booster.
“We’ve had bad weather, bad scheduling, we haven’t had the hours that we hoped, but the hours that we had and the practice that we (have) done is definitely beneficial. I’ve seen improvements when I first I came back (sic),” said Boulton.
Fillman, now in his 22nd year as head coach, was pleased with the way his team began the season with their third-place finish but is since unsatisfied with the following outputs. He is hoping to get the team back on track and avoid an early-season slump.
“We had a great first week of season. The last two weeks, not so much," Fillman said. "We still were able to play qualifying rounds over the weekend, both Saturday rounds were completely washed out, but we did get to play the Friday and Sunday rounds.”
Along with sports such as tennis, cross country and track, golf is a unique sport where players compete against themselves - even those on their team. Though there's the individual aspect of golf, all invitationals the Lancers compete in have team-based results to come with it. Players such as Boulton find this aspect to be challenging but over his career, he has found how to overcome these challenges.
“It’s one of the most individual sports, you’re not just playing somebody else, but you’re playing the golf course,” Boulton said. “Not only are you playing yourself, but you are also facing the course setup, which is one of the toughest things golfers have to go through.”
Being around the sport and the program as long as he has, Fillman tries to surround himself with players who he thinks is hungry to improve and has the same drive to win as he does.
“I’m one of those guys who believes that if you do the things that you’re supposed to do, the scoreboard takes care of its self, and whenever you don’t do what you’re supposed to do it can take care of it that way too,” said Fillman.
Above all, the ultimate goal for Fillman is to not only be competitive and win their season tournaments but to reach the conference championships match play, and not to mention, keep his players in check in the classroom.
“Our big goal is giving ourselves an opportunity to play in the match play portion of the Big South Championships in the end of April, that’s our number one goal, golf-wise, but number one goal overall is a 3.5 GPA.”
Fillman believes in the players he has to take the team to new heights, and he only has one focus on the course.
“The reason we play is to go win."
