April 25, 2012
Contact: Greg Murphy
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland State men's golf team will set out to defend its Horizon League Championship when CSU competes at the league tournament from Friday through Sunday (April 27-29).
The league championship is being played at the par-72, 6,933-yard Mission Inn Resort in Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla., for the second straight season.
Last year, the Vikings shot rounds of 308-308-309 (925) to beat runner-up Wright State by seven shots. It was CSU's fourth league title in the last five years (2006, 2008, 2009, 2011).
At last year's league championship, the duo of Andrew Bailey and Michael Klaric paced the Vikings as they tied for medalist honors with 54-hole totals of 224. Bailey opened with a 71 and followed with rounds of 77-76, while Klaric shots 75-74-75.
"We are looking forward to getting down to Florida and competing in the league championship," head coach Steve Weir said. "It's always nice to go into an event like this as the defending champs, but we know there is a lot of work ahead this weekend. We have to go out and stay focused mentally for 54 holes and limit our mistakes.
"We have had a good week of practice so far with some tweaking and fine tuning and look forward to seeing the course down in Florida again."
CSU was last in action over the weekend, tying for fourth place out of 15 teams at the EY Ball State Invitational. The event featured a unique scoring concept with each team playing six golfers and the low five scores counting as opposed to the traditional play five and count four.
The Vikings, who played with just five players due to some injuries, were forced to count all five scores, but it didn't seem to hurt them as CSU finished ahead of the other four Horizon League schools in the field.
"I thought we had a great tournament to finish the regular season and head to the league championship," Weir said. "It's never easy when you tee off and know that your score is going to count because you don't have a teammate to fall back on, but the guys really stayed focused all three rounds."
Bailey's 73.5 scoring average continues to lead the squad this year, while his eight rounds of par or better are also a team-best.
Klaric is second on the team with a 74.1 scoring average and seven rounds of par or better.
Together, the duo has been CSU's top finisher at eight of the team's 10 events this year.
It was freshman Michael Balcar who paced CSU last weekend at Ball State, shooting three straight rounds of 73 to finish in ninth place with a career-low 54-hole total of 219.
The winner of the Horizon League Championship will receive the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals. The six regional sites this year are Greensboro, N.C., Athens, Ga., Ann Arbor, Mich., Bowling Green, Ky., Norman, Okla., and Stanford, Calif. The regionals would take place May 17-19.
