Elliott turns in Cowboys’ best fall numbers

Published 6:53 pm Sunday, November 26, 2017

McNeese State’s Cowboys golf team recently wrapped up its fall season with Blake Elliott the leading scorer.

He averaged 69.91 strokes per round in four tournaments to lead the Southland Conference to rank No. 37th nationally.

“Obviously Blake did great,” said head coach Austin Burk. “He didn’t shoot over par all semester. He’s a worker and has that little extra gear.”

In the four tournaments, Elliott led the way with a third-, fifth-, seventh- and 10th-place showings.

The Cowboys had two top-five efforts with a third place in LSU’s David Toms Intercollegiate the best.

“I won’t say that I was disappointed (in the performance), but I wasn’t exactly happy with it either,” Burk said of the fall work. “We got better as the semester went on but still didn’t play at the level I know we can.”

He said his team will have a busy spring schedule  with seven tournaments over a nine-week period leading up to the conference tournament.

“We will need help in the No. 4 and No. 5 spots, but what team doesn’t? We are going to have to get into some kind of rhythm,” he added.

The Cowboys will be shooting for a third consecutive SLC championship in the spring.

McNeese had three players among the league’s top performers in the fall as Ian Berrigan ranked No. 9 (73 average) and Andreas Krokeide was 10th (73.36).

The team will tee off its spring on Feb. 16 in Houston’s All-American Intercollegiate at the Golf Club of Houston and will follow that with the Louisiana Classics in Lafayette (Feb. 26-27), Border Olympics in Laredo, Texas (March 9-10), Texas-San Antonio’s Lone Star Invitational (March 19-20), their own Lake Charles Invitational at the Country Club of Golden Nugget (March 26-27), the Wyoming Cowboy Classic in Phoenix (April 9-10) and the Mississippi State Classic (April 16-17).

The conference tournament runs April 23-25 in McKinney, Texas.

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Gray Plantation’s assistant pro Jonathan Jester is the newest local PGA pro to obtain his Class A card. 

He recently completed the requirements that gives him full benefits as a club and teaching professional.

A native of upstate New York, the 56-year-old Jester ,who is a Marine veteran, played golf in high school and then was a baseball and lacrosse letterman at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania.

Late in life he turned to the golf profession working at different courses on the East Coast, and at one time was the head professional at the Holley Ridge Golf Course in North Carolina.

He came to the Lake Charles area as the golf pro for Dick’s Sporting Goods and joined Gray several years ago when Dick’s let all of their more than 500 pros nationwide go.

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Brian Bernhardt was recently named the Gray Plantation player of the year. In full year competition Bernhardt beat out Jeff Ardoin.

Bernhardt got the edge in Gray’s final tournament of the season, a two-man alternate-shot event. He and teammate Joe Underwood placed third.

Greg Ardoin and son Zac took the top spot by shooting a net score of 76. Vic Montgomery and Bill Wiese were second, taking the spot in a scorecard playoff with Bernhardt and Underwood.

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The area’s most recent holes-in-one were produced by Gary Viator and Neill Osborne.

Viator aced the 125-yard 11th hole at Mallard Cove with a 9-iron (it was his first) while Osborne made his hole-in-one on No. 8 at Gray Plantation.

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Louis Bonnette has written about local golf for the American Press since 1971. His column appears each Sunday. Contact him at 274-5689 or lbonnette@mcneese.edu