Men’s Golf Hosts The Johnnie-O At Sea Island, Has Goals of Contending for NCAAs

ST. SIMON’S ISLAND, Ga. – The Rutgers men’s golf program hosted the second-consecutive Johnnie O event at Sea Island this past weekend and it was a huge success. RU finished in seventh place at the event but had a win against the best program in the Big Ten Conference in Illinois and played host to many successful golf programs around the nation.

Head coach Rob Shutte ran the event and is looking forward to continuing to put Rutgers men’s golf on the national scale and there’s no better way to showcase the success of the program than the Johnnie-O.

“When you see the Haskins Award show up, which is the most prestigious college golf award and you see the signage that’s out there, and you’ve got a big brand like Johnnie-O behind the event and the quality of the teams that show up, it’s great for Rutgers to be on that stage,” Shutte said. “To be highlighted as a program hosting a first-class tournament at a first-class venue with a first-class title sponsor, it speaks to what we are as a program. We’re out there on the best stage, playing with the best teams and producing a really well-run tournament. It’s great to hear the feedback from the student-athletes, coaches, and parents about the experience they all had, so it certainly makes you motivated to do it again and do it even better next year.”

 

As a team Rutgers shot a -7 in three rounds. Many of RU’s upperclassmen and leaders showed out stellar in the event in their individual performances. Weston Jones and Rhett Sellers led the way for the Scarlet Knights both tying for 19^th place shooting 2-under for the week. This is Rutgers fourth straight top-10 finish to start the spring. Sellers, the upperclassmen from Texas enjoyed achieving one of Shutte’s goals of finishing in front of the Fighting Illini, who finished -4 as a team.

“I got off to a slow start. I think I shot a 74 in the first round, but I backed it up with a 68 so that gave me some momentum going into Tuesday,” Sellers said. “I don’t remember if we were ahead of Illinois going into Tuesday or not, but we knew we were right there. It’s always been Coach’s goal to beat Illinois at one of these events if not the Big Ten Championship. We all had that mindset going in just because he has cemented that goal into us through him. I think we all knew what we were trying to do. We all played…