February 16, 2001
The Texas A&M men's golf team battled through strong winds to record an opening round 332 on Thursday at the Taylor Made Intercollegiate at the Kings' and Beach Golf Courses.
The Aggies' are in 15th place in the 21-team field, 30 strokes behind first-round leader Texas, going into Friday's second round. The three-day tournament concludes with a final 18 holes on Saturday.
With winds blowing in the 20-30 miles range and gusts up to 40 mph, Texas' Matt Dobyns played the Beach course and took a four-stroke lead over TCU's Scott Volpitto and Stephen Polanski, Arizona State's Matt Jones, and CSU-Bakersfield's Mike Plate. A stroke behind at 75 were Georgia Tech's Troy Matteson, Texas' Matt Brost, UCLA's Parker McLachlin and BYU's Scott Miller.
Behind Texas' 22-over-par 302 were TCU (307), Oregon (308), Arizona State (313), CSU-Bakersfield (315), Brigham Young (317), UCLA and USC (320), Georgia Tech and Rhode Island (321), Oklahoma (325), Pepperdine (328), Nevada (329), UC-Santa Barbara (331), Texas A&M (332), Arkansas (333), Hawaii, Nagoya and Oregon State (334), San Diego State and Washington (336), San Francisco (343), Southern Methodist (349) and Hawaii Hilo (358).
Senior Casey Cronin led A&M with a 78 and is tied for 18th place in the individual standings. Junior Josh McCoy and sophomore Matt Lindholm carded 82s while sophomore Shaun Helmle and freshman Stephen Reed each posted a 90.