The Durango High School boys golf team has been building up to this moment. Now, it’s time to hit the drives, pin chase with the irons and sink the putts at the 4A state championship.
Two years ago, Durango’s Zach Griswold was the program’s lone player at state, finishing 33rd. Last season, Durango qualified as a team for state for the first time in six years and finished fourth as a team. Drew Jepson, a sophomore at the time, was the team’s top finisher in ninth.
Jepson and the Demons hope to do better than that this year as Durango takes on the best teams in 4A at the 4A state championship at Fox Hill Club in Longmont on Monday and Tuesday.
“We're just going to go up and spend a couple of days getting familiar with the course,” Durango head coach Kirk Rawles said. “We'll see where we're at on Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully, we've got enough gas in the tank to finish and try to do their personal best for the year. If everybody does that, we have a legitimate shot.”
The Demons are ranked 11th in 4A when it comes to each team’s best team scores of the season. However, Durango ranks sixth in 4A with all of each team’s team scores from the season.
All 4A schools will have to battle Fox Hill Club to win the state title. Rawles said he hasn’t been at Fox Hill in over a decade, but remembers the course has trees everywhere. Players will have to shoot over them or keep the ball under them.
Players will play 18 holes on Monday and another 18 holes on Tuesday at Fox Hill. Both rounds will have a mix of tee boxes, ranging from the championship black tees and the red tees. Round 1 will be 6,445 yards and Round 2 will be 6,475 yards.
Rawles is confident in his players’ capabilities at Fox Hill Club. There was some uncertainty in the last few weeks with the new format. In the past, teams would go to regionals and would qualify for state depending on how they did there. This year, regionals were scrapped. Players and teams qualified based on how they did in the regular season tournaments. The top 84 players advanced to state this year. Each team gets to bring four players inside the top 84. Any other player inside the top 84 doesn’t get to go.
The Demons were relieved to see all four of their players make it inside the top 84. Jepson is ranked ninth, senior Nolan Pace is 32nd, junior Hayes Malone is 77th and senior Wyatt Lafferty is 83rd.
“It’s a whole clean state,” Rawles said. “Everyone’s playing. It doesn’t matter what you shot during the year. It’s just what you shoot for those two days.”
One player who might not want to clean the regular season slate is Jepson. The junior from Bayfield has had a stellar season with multiple wins and a few runner-up finishes. Jepson finished ninth at state last year.
“I'm feeling great,” Jepson said. “I'm feeling very confident in myself and thinking I'm going to take it home. That is what I'm feeling. Everything about my game feels superior.”
Jepson can reflect on last season’s ninth-place finish at state with content, knowing he didn’t have his best stuff on the day and still managed a top-10 finish.
The Fox Hill Club course will be a new one for Jepson. He’s heard from friends who have played it that he’ll hit driver a lot and there’s an opportunity to hit driver over some dog legs.
Luckily for Jepson, the driver is what he’s been working on the most. He’s struggled with hitting the fairway in the past. However, he’s happy that he’s hitting the ball straight with his driver and Jepson is looking forward to putting the ball in play with his 5-wood and 7-wood.
The junior stud isn’t intimidated by the stage or the two-day format. He played a lot of 36-hole tournaments in the summer and he thinks of state as just another high school event. Jepson did like the old format of regionals; he saw it as a warmup for state. However, regardless of how he got to state, Jepson knows what’s at stake.
“I'm very proud of my guys, for sure,” Jepson said. “Especially Hayes (Malone) because he came from nowhere and now he made it to state. I'm just very proud of him and I'm very excited to compete for two state titles in a couple of days.”
Another big key for Durango’s team state title hopes is Pace. He’s shown the ability to go low this year with his 5-under-par 67 at the Fruita Monument Wildcats Invitational.
Unfortunately for Pace, he’s been sidelined for the last week with a back injury. He was swinging so much over a few days that he tweaked something in his back. Despite this setback, Pace thinks he can do better than last year’s 24th-place finish at state. He’ll be content with a top-15 finish, but he wants to be in the top 10.
“We're back to a full swing,” Pace said. “I spent a couple of days putting, but I'm not too worried about how state's going to go and how I'll be playing.”
The two newcomers to the state championship competition on Durango’s roster are Malone and Lafferty. Malone, from Bayfield, and Lafferty have had multiple rounds this season in the 70s.
Malone said he’s had an up-and-down season so far this year. He felt like he hit his groove in the middle of the season and then finished the season with some rough scores. Malone has been working on his distance control. A first-year varsity player, Malone knows his role at state and knows he won’t be counted on as the top scorer for Durango.
“I feel like I can just go out there and give them (Jepson, Pace) a solid round,” Malone said. “Then they can take us the rest of the way. Me and Wyatt, one of us is bound to have a good two rounds and that'll help us get there.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
