Greencastle girls’ golf looking to be on right side of balancing act in 2023

Two matches into the 2023 campaign, Greencastle is in a familiar spot to last season with a squad shorthanded to start the season, though with a bit more experience than before with a pair of returning golfers and a third with experience out to start the year.

“We’ve got four girls out, though we’re waiting on the fourth to be eligible,” Tiger Cub head coach Brad Kingma said. “We have two returners in Grace Long and Emma Callahan, both of whom are better than last year.

“We’re struggling with consistency but the good shots are better than before and the good holes are better than they were before. Hannah McLaughlin played at Cloverdale a couple of years ago and made some good improvements and had a couple of really good holes tonight (against South Putnam).

Having to start with two matches in the opening five days of the season, including one day of practice that was rained out, has not allowed for a lot of time to get settled in.

“We’re looking for consistency everywhere,” Kingma said. “A four-putt will pop up here, a couple of chips to get on to the green there, one drive is great and the next is topped.

“The ability is there but we just need to work a little bit to avoid miss-hits like we have right now. We’re not always properly setup to where we want to hit the ball.

“Because we start right away, we haven’t had a lot of time to work on things,” Kingma added. “We’ve worked a little on putting, looking at distance control, and made progress but there’s more to go.

“We’ve been at the range and looked at some of the basics of the swing.”

Though the start was tough, Kingma said there were some flashes of good play in the opening two rounds of the year and felt the experience the team had this year would eventually tell once a full squad came together.

“Individually, they’re on the cusp of some good things,” Kingma said. “We haven’t set any team goals or win this goals, so we’re looking at individual scores.

“We’ll have a better chance at winning some matches as we have more consistency from our top three. Our fourth is new, but we were taking scores near circle on every hole last year, so that’s not going to hurt us in comparison to last year.”