Johnson wins third event of year
A golfer will rarely point to a 19th-place finish to show where his season turned in the right direction.
Eric Johnson could be doing that at the end of the season.
Johnson, a senior on the NDSU men’s golf team, said during his final nine holes at the Hal Sutton Intercollegiate in Shreveport, La. he began to regain the form he had during the fall season.
“I felt like my swing was coming back,” said Johnson, who shot a three-day total of 226 to finish 19th on April 3. “I felt a little bit more confident, more in midseason form.”
Johnson used the momentum from the Hal Sutton event four days later at the Beu/Mussato golf tournament in Macomb, Ill.
Johnson shot a 71 the first day to earn a three-stroke lead heading into the final round.
Johnson shot a 75 the second day to win by six strokes. Besides Johnson, the rest of the field had high scores due to the very cold and windy weather.
“Somebody said it was only 9 degrees with the wind chill,” Johnson said. “There were some flurries and the ground was so hard you could dribble the golf ball like a basketball.”
As a team, the Bison finished in third place out of 20 teams. Tournament host Western Illinois won the event.
It was the highest finish the Bison have had in a tournament not in the Fargo-Moorhead area since April 2004.
“I was real proud of how the guys did with the bad weather,” Johnson said. “Before the tournament (head coach Billy Iverson) said this is the weather we live in, and we need to show the southern boys how it’s done.”
Johnson’s success doesn’t come as much surprise, though.
The Elk River, Minn. native played the best golf of his career during the fall.
Johnson, who was named First Team All-Independent as a junior, had never won an individual title until Sept. 10, when he was the medalist at the Navy Fall Invitational in Annapolis, M.D.
A week later, Johnson won the Erv Kaiser Invitational in Fargo.
To keep his play up, Johnson said he worked on his game at the indoor Sports Bubble in town over the winter. He also took three trips down south to get some time on the course as well.
“I have privileges that let me play at the Sports Bubble and also to travel with my parents in the offseason,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s work proved effective right on the team’s first trip of the spring in Hawaii when he started the Kauai Collegiate Cup with rounds of 71 and 69.
However, he followed his stellar start with one of the worst rounds of the year, an 81.
“I was really surprised when I shot that low to start,” Johnson said. “When I shot the 81, it all came crumbling down for me.”
The team will compete again on April 21 when it faces SDSU in the Dakota Cup III in Morton, Minn.