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Led by an even par 71 from Hunter Eichhorn, Marquette men’s golf knocked together a +9 final round at the 2019 NCAA Regionals in Austin, TX, on Wednesday. That left them at +28 for the three day tournament and in eighth place, 20 strokes behind the fifth and final spot that advances to the NCAA nationals next week.
As such, Marquette’s season is over, but it’s far from a disappointing end.
The Golden Eagles came into the regional as the #8 seed, and they leave finished in eighth place. Merely matching their seed expectation is a pretty good result on its own. On top of that, Marquette had never finished better than 11th in an NCAA regional before this year. The eighth place finish here is the program’s best ever finish in the regionals, and their team score of 880 is the best score at regionals as well. Thus, it’s a historically great performance for the Golden Eagles.
Texas, taking advantage of the regional being played at the UT Golf Club, won the regional at -25 across the three days. Second place TCU finished at -5, so the Longhorns absolutely wrecked shop. Clemson (-1), Pepperdine (+6), and USC (+8) round out the group of teams advancing to nationals.
At +3 for 54 holes, Hunter Eichhorn is Marquette’s best performer at regionals. However, +3 was nowhere near enough for Eichhorn to grab up the “best player not on an advancing team” spot at nationals. That goes to Arkansas’ Julian Perico, who was three-under-par for the tournament. Eichhorn ended up finishing tied for 18th place, and he was joined in the top 25 by Austin Kendziorski, whose +4 score was good enough for a tie for 20th place.
With the season over, we must say farewell to the seniors, and that means a big Anonymous Eagle THANK YOU to Oliver Farrell, Austin Kendziorski, and Charlie Maleki. When they arrived on campus in the fall of 2015, Marquette was coming off the second Big East title in program history. In their four years, the Golden Eagles have doubled the number of conference championship trophies standing in the golf office on campus. They’ve been a major reason why this program has grown into a nationally relevant squad as of late, and it’s been wonderful to watch it happen. We wish you guys nothing but the best in whatever comes next for you.