Rams Start Process of Rolling with the Punches

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Men's Golf

vs Ram Masters

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Men's Golf

at The Prestige

A year ago, Elijah Knudsen said he still would have considered himself a basketball player who was becoming a college golfer. Understandable considering he played college basketball his first few years of being a student-athlete.

A school change led to a sport change, but one he was used to, having put together a strong prep career at Mead High School. With nine rounds under his belt last year, the mentality has changed. He also knows no matter what sport you play, or for how long, lessons are around the corner.

"Today threw me some challenges. Just have to move to the next shot," he said after the first day of the 2026-27 season opened with the Ram Masters at the Fort Collins Country Club. "You can't let one pile into another. If you do, it can go downhill pretty quickly.

"I had 28 holes of good golf and 8 holes that killed me."

The first tournament consisted of 36 holes of play Thursday, with the players knowing it was going to be a grind before ever stepping up to the first hole and sliding a tee into the earth. The weather was good and the greens were fast, but the pace of play a bit slow in pockets.

Then came the actual shots which needed to be hit. In one way or another, every Ram who played during the day had something to contend with, which coach Jack Kennedy considered a good thing.

"I mean, you've gotta start somewhere. You go through qualifying, you go through practice," Kennedy said. "It's just different when the lights come on and you want to see how guys respond.

"We talked (Wednesday) about adversity and long day and grinding through some good and some bad, and I thought we did that for the most part, which I'm proud of. There's just some execution stuff we have to clean up and that's part of playing the first day of college golf and we got some new guys in the lineup that have some excitement and some things they're dealing with, but it was a good start."

Or in the case of Charlie Tucker, a good finish. After playing the first round 5-over, he came back with a 2-under.

He had five birdies on the first 10 holes of the second set of 18, then after a couple of rough spots on holes 11 and 14, he came back with a birdie and made par his final three holes.

The mental approach requires as much preparation as the physical toll of the day.

"It was a good second round just one bad hole. Other than that, I played really nice," Tucker said. "I think it's huge for us to be able to start at home and on a course that we know really well.

"It's a mix of both, but it's just kind of staying present when you're taking it one shot at a time. That's really all you can do. Overall, it's just staying in it not giving up and taking it one shot at a time."

By the end of the first round, particular aspects were playing out, particularly the fast greens. Tucker called them pure, and Knudsen admitted they were rather pristine, just tricky to the point of frustrations at points.

There wasn't a team under par after the first round, a trend which would continue. Utah Tech outlasted it all the best, sitting at 7-over as a team. A total of 10 players were under par after the first round, and 10 more played the second round in the red, but only six players finished there overall, with Utah Valley's Ty Brady closing at 4-under, one stroke ahead of Junting Yu of Utah Tech.

The Rams' best scoring day came from Owen Mullen at 1-over, thought Florentine Meller, playing independent, sat at 1-under. The Rams were among the leaders in pars and birdies, but to Kennedy's point, collected more bogies and doubles than the team would like.

But Friday is a new day and there's no reason to shun optimism.

"Obviously, we would like to be in a little better position, but the best part of college golf is the third round. It's an amazing deal. There's 10-15 shot swings," he said. "We're gonna go be positive with the guys right now, talk about the little things that we can clean up that we just beat ourselves with, like little three putts, not getting easy up-and-downs, boogying par-fives, things that we've just talked about all year that are just little things that will help us. So again, we just have to look ourselves in the mirror. There's nothing else we can do other than go back and take care of the little things."

The one thing they all know, as long as Thursday was, the grind has just begun.

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