The defending National Champion John A. Logan College men’s golf team took on the big boys (Division I) this week at the Skyhawk Classic in Martin, Tenn. and placed fourth from a field of 14 at Paris Landing Golf Course. The Volunteers carded a three-day total of 872, or 33 strokes behind runaway winner Central Arkansas. It marked the first time this fall that the Vols had not won a tournament.

“We played OK the first two rounds, but did not play well at all the last round,” said Logan head coach Tom Ferris. “It was a course where you could score low, but we just did not get it done. Golf is like that sometimes. You don’t always have your best game going for you and this was one of those tournaments for us.”

Murray State and Tennessee Tech also finished ahead of the Vols. Logan did manage to outscore Union University, Tennessee State, Belmont, the host UT Martin, Evansville, Indiana-Purdue, Jackson State, Lipscomb and Bethel.

Logan’s top individual performance went to sophomore Matt Smith, who finished eighth overall at the tournament with a 215 (72- 68-75) or 12 strokes behind winner, Jad Sinclair of Central Arkansas. Fellow soph, Marcelo Rozo, tied for 14th at 218 (75-72-71).

Freshman Filip Timmerman was 23rd at 220 (69-74-77). Joe Goelzhauser was 45th at 226 (74-73-79) and Adam Butler finished 69th at 232 (73-85-74).

“We can’t worry about how things went for us in this tournament too much as we won four in a row previous to this one,” Ferris said. “Now, we need to focus on our last two invitationals (Mississippi Gulf Coast this weekend and Shawnee College next weekend) of the fall season and try and get back on track.”