Capping off the fall season with a fourth place finish, the Marshall University men’s golf team shot a combined 40-over par at the Dayton Flyer Invitational Oct. 14-15.

Marshall improved its team score in each round, dropping four stokes from round one to round three.

“I felt like it was a really good way to end the semester,” Head Men’s Golf Coach Matt Grobe said.

The tournament began with a 36-hole, two round day on Monday, Oct. 14.

“The conditions were very difficult,” Grobe said. “It was a little bit cold in the morning, and then the winds kind of picked up in the afternoon.”

After day one, the team found themselves tied for fourth place with Dayton.

“The guys found really hard for 36 holes,” Grobe said.

This was the same Dayton team Marshall played in the season opener at the Joe Feaganes Marshall Invitational and lost by 15 strokes. A little over a month later with the home courses reversed, the Thundering Herd found themselves on par with the Flyers.

“It was really good to see our guys play really well with Dayton,” Grobe said.

Marshall not only played well with them, but after day one, the team separated itself from Dayton to finish solely in fourth place.

Individually, freshman Tyler Jones finished tied for 10th overall with a 5-over par mark, and in round three, he shot a 70 on the par 71 course.

For his solid performance, Jones earned Conference USA Men’s Golfer of the Week honors. It was the first time a Marshall golfer had been honored with a weekly award since Alex Weiss in 2017.

“It’s really neat to see a kid step on campus – learning about college, going to classes, doing all that stuff – to win an award like that,” Grobe said. “[He’s] just been a wonderful addition to our team.”

Redshirt junior Cameron Root had the second-best score on the Marshall team, shooting a 9-over par and tied for 17th place overall.

After being disappointed with his performance at the Mountaineer Intercollegiate, Grobe said Root was “happy to kind of get that last tournament’s taste out of his mouth and be able to play pretty good golf this week.”

For the rest of the Marshall team, junior Brad Plaziak shot a 14-over par, sophomore Kyle Mitchell shot a 15-over par and redshirt senior Ben Roeder shot a 19-over par.

Winning the invitational at 21-over par, Wright State survived a final round charge by Cleveland State. Wright State ended up five strokes better than Cleveland State and seven strokes better than the third-place team, Oakland.

With the Dayton Flyer Invitational completed, so too is the Herd’s fall season. Marshall’s men’s golf team will be back in action Feb. 2, 2020 at the Georgia Southern Collegiate.

Grant Goodrich can be contacted at [email protected].