Hodag golfers take 4th in GNC match following slow start at Bass Lake

The Rhinelander High School boys’ golf team found itself in a bit of a hole in the Great Northern Conference race following Tuesday’s third round of the conference tournament at Bass Lake Golf Club in Deerbrook.

The Hodags shot 353 and finished fourth in the eight-team meet. Rhinelander entered the day tied for first in the GNC standings with Lakeland and Mosinee, but fell three points adrift in third place after Lakeland took the meet with a 333, and Mosinee finished second with a 340.

Rhinelander got off to a very slow start Tuesday, with all five golfers recording a double bogey on one of their first two holes. The Hodags were in seventh at one point early in the event, and though things stabilized as the round progressed, Rhinelander finished two strokes behind Merrill for third on the day. 

“It was a grind,” coach Adam Schmidt said. “We started off  with some big numbers. Guys were on the double train, and then they were on the bogey train, and it was just grinding. A lot of them got the trouble off the tee right away.”

Hank Kowieski and Chase West weren’t immune to the early struggles, but turned their rounds around in time to finish inside the top 10 and salvage some individual conference points. 

Kowieski doubled his opening hole, the par-3 eighth, and followed with a bogey before a string of four pars in five holes stabilized his round. He made seven straight bogeys between holes 15-18 and 1-3, and made back-to-back doubles on the fifth and sixth before a closing birdie on the par-5 seventh gave him an 85, which was good enough to finish in a three-way tie for seventh. 

West shot one stroke higher, with an 86, and split the final conference point three ways in a 10th-place tie. West started with double on the seventh and was 8-over through his first seven holes before playing a nine-hole stretch in 3-over 38 between the 14th and the fourth. He closed his round with a double on the fifth and a bogey at the sixth.

“They both were able to get top 10, so that was good,” Schmidt noted. “We kind of talked about it like Hank said, you know, he didn’t play like a terrible round, but like there’s so many strokes that he just threw away.”

Grant Gremban finished four strokes out of the points, shooting 90 to take 20th. Blake Petroff was 27th with a 92 and Dylan Shefveland finished 37th with a 97. On top of cool, windy conditions, Schmidt said the firmness of Bass Lake’s layout caught the players off guard, especially considering the relatively wet start to the spring.

“One of the holes that we had just little pitch shot, Blake landed it like three, four feet short of the green, bounced right up and rolled like 25 feet (away). That doesn’t really make sense, but it was super hard,” Schmidt said.

Lakeland’s Jaydan Schilling was the only player to break 80 on the day, as his eight-over round of 79 took medalist honors by a stroke over Northland Pines’ Sam Shrock.

“That’s pretty rare for a 79 to win,” Schmidt said, underscoring the difficulty of the day.

Individually, the Hodags still have four players inside the top 15 of the conference standings through three legs of the conference tournament. Gremban dropped to seventh overall while West sits eighth. Petroff is 11th and Kowieski sits in a three-way tie for 14th. The top 15 at the end of the season will receive all-conference honors. 

The conference will make a stop at Eagle River Golf Course on Friday and Black River Golf Course Monday, May 11 for its next two rounds of the tournament. In between, the Hodags will head to Merrill on Saturday for the annual Merrill Best Ball Invite. 

Schmidt said Tuesday that the team is still working to set a make-up date for its leg of the GNC tournament that was postponed May 1 due to cold conditions. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].