8A - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com MEWS GOLF Kim leads Cichigan to close fourth-place finish After winning first career individual collegiate green.I victory. into th individual title at one week later, at the Rod nating Myers Invitational in Durham, last tournamlent, NC, Kim found himself in a simi- Kim faltr lar position. His team had already Kifalters on No. 18 locked upa fourth-place finish, but "W with just one hole to play, Kim was By KEVIN RAFTERY one stroke behind North Carolina t Daily Sports Writer State freshman Albin Choi for the individual title. He would need a MU It seemed so familiar. birdie on the par-four 18th to put Just one week ago at the Win- the pressure on Choi and force a 1 don Memorial Classic, Michigan possible playoff hole. senior Lion Kim stood at the tee Unfortunately for Kim, Mon- of the 18th hole, needing a par to day's end result was far different give his team its first victory of the from last week's. hole an season. Faced with a 180-yard second "I r Kim drilled a 40-foot putt to shot, Kim pulled out his six iron myself; give his team the win and earn his and tried to hit a high cut into the to at lea FOLLOW @MICHDAI LYSPORTS ON TWITTER But he pulled the shot left ment, but I just hit a poor second .e bunker, virtually elimi- shot," Kim said. "It was a risky his chance to birdie the shot, but it was either goingto beI win or I don't. I wasn't really wor- ried about finishing in the top-five or top-10." e played better Kim went on to bogey the hole and finished the tournament tied than pretty for fifth with a final round 72 and a tournament score of 3-under 213, ich everybody two strokes behind Choi. "I hit a lot of iron shots, but I n the field." just couldn't make any putts," Kim said. "I honestly feel like I gave away the individual title of this tournament, but I'll learn from d tie Choi for the lead. this. The positive thing is that I eally just wanted to give still feel like I didn't play my best a good look at a birdie putt and in the end I still contended for ast try to tie for the tourna- the tournament. It just shows that I can still contend for any tourna- ment that I play in, even when I don't have my 'A' game." In the first round on Sunday, Kim was not alone at the top of the leaderboard for Michigan. Junior Matt Thompson, sopho- more Jack Schultz, sophomore Rahul Bakshi and freshman Joey Garber all posted scores under par, propelling the Wolverines into a second-place ranking, five strokes behind Iowa. But Michigan could not keep its momentum going into the sec- ond round on Sunday, as Thomp- son, Garber and Bakshi all were plagued by costly double-bogeys. Kim was the only Wolverine under par and Michigan ended the round with a five-over 293. "We had to count a 78 (in the second round)," Sapp said. "On a golf course like this and against teams that are playing well, if you're counting a six-over par as one of your top four scores dur- ing the round, that's going to hurt you." Despite the less-than-stellar second round, the Wolverines were still only 12 total strokes behind first-place Iowa. And a notable final round would have given Michigan a chance at the title. But the 12-stroke deficit turned out to be too steep of a hill to climb, as the Hawkeyes ran away with the title with a tournament total of 13-under 851- five strokes ahead of second-place North Car- olina State and 10 strokes ahead of the fourth-placeWolverines. "We wanted to come out and shoot a good score and make the leaders catch us," Sapp said. "We played better than pretty much everybody in the field in the final round, but (Sunday) really hurt us. We needed the leaders to give us a little more help today." Though Michigan didn't come away with the victory, the Wol- verines had a positive tournament overall. Each player in the starting lineup posted at least one round under par, and-that will without doubt give the team confidence it heads into the final two weeks of the fall season. "We competed to win this week," Sapp said. "We came up short, but we beat a lot of good teams in this field. We want to keep moving up and keep getting more trophies in the next couple of weeks." e 0 WANNA WRITE FOR THE DAILY 0 SPORTS SECTION? Come to one of our Sunday meetings STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BUILDING, 420 MAYNARD ST. pWC Linked in 0 2010 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. "PricewaterhouseCoopers" refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a Delaware limited liability partnership) or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity. We are proud to be an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. L inkedln and the Linkedln logo are registered trademarks of Linkedln Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. 1 P.M.