PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. – The trio of Thomas Ponder, Canon Claycomb and Nick Dunlap each finished inside the top-10 individuals to lead the No. 17 Alabama men’s golf team to a fourth-place finish at the Watersound Invitational. The Crimson Tide carded a 14-under par in Tuesday’s third round of play to close the three-day, 54-hole event with a team score of 23-under par 841 (282-285-274).
The 11-team field featured eight teams ranked inside Golfstat.com’s top-40 national rankings, including six among the top 25.
Ponder highlighted the individual play as he finished the tournament alone in sixth place with an 11-under par 205 (67-71-67) to earn his team-leading third top-10 finish of the year. Both Claycomb (72-69-68) and Dunlap (69-71-69) also shined as they tied for ninth after carding identical scores of 7-under par 209.
In addition to the three starters, Jones Free, who competed as an individual this week, also performed well with a career-best showing. After collecting a single-round personal-best 5-under 67 in round two, Free as he carded a career-best 54-hole total of 3-under par 213 (73-67-73), which included.
Head Coach Jay Seawell
“I am really proud of our guys and I think we took another step towards getting better. There are a lot of things for us to build off and learn from. I think our guys showed improvement from our first tournament in the spring. We are going to need to continue to improve to get to the top of leaderboards like playing consistent throughout, but we certainly finished on a high note. So, we learned some lessons that we will take and try to get better on and are looking forward to getting back to work and preparing for a terrific the Cabo Collegiate in two weeks.”
Individual Highlights
- Ponder earned the second-best finish of his career with this week’s result, while also collecting his third career top-five showing and eighth top-10 result
- Ponder led the entire field on par 3 holes (-4, 2.67) and ranked third in par 4 scoring (-6, 3.80)
- With three sub-par rounds on the week, Ponder now has 13 rounds this season of par or lower and seven rounds in the 60s
- Claycomb carded his best round of the event on Tuesday with a 4-under 68 to finish
- Claycomb is now second on the team in rounds in the 60s (8)…
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