Cats scramble to share of fourth

SOCORRO — Clovis junior Tyler Fontenot is the oldest of a young group of Wildcats golfers at state and, with the most experience, he’s also played the New Mexico Tech course several times before.

On Monday, Fontenot described the layout as one players either love or hate. The jury for the Clovis players is still out, however, after day one of the Class 5A tournament.

Fontenot shot an 80 to put him in a three-way tie for 11th out of 46 golfers heading into today’s final round. Along with the rest of the Cats, he battled not only the vagaries of the course but a nasty whipping wind for almost all of the back nine.

As a team, Clovis shot 339 to tie with Cibola and Sandia for fifth overall, one stroke ahead of last-place Alamogordo.

La Cueva leads the 5A boys team standings with a four-man score of 299.

“It was playing really tough and, our last six or seven holes, the wind really picked up,” Fontenot said. “It didn’t really hurt us that bad, I don’t think, because down in Clovis we’re used to it. That’s our only advantage.”

The four best individual rounds out of five determine the team’s score, while the fifth is dropped.

On Monday, Kyler Brewer-Hill shot an 84, Raul Trujillo tallied an 87 while Corbin Best and Kyle Wornell each went into the clubhouse with an 88.

Trujillo, Best and Wornell are all freshman, while Brewer-Hill is a sophomore.

“Our ninth-graders were a little jittery, and that’s to be expected,” Clovis coach Cal Fullerton said. “They really put on a good show here — they call you to the teebox at the first hole and everyone’s watching.

“Even for juniors or seniors, that’s probably a little nerve-wracking. We kind of got off to a bad start, but we settled down and pretty much played bogey golf for the rest of the round.”

Containing errors, keeping them from escalating into bigger problems, is Fontenot’s goal as he aims to move up the leaderboard today.

“I had three doubles (double-bogeys) and was still able to shoot an 80,” he said. “If I had taken care of the doubles, it would have been a lot better round.

“I struggled, but my putter was about the best it’s been all year. I had 26 putts and my average is about 31. That definitely saved me today.”

Fontenot said his round qualified as so-so.

“It can either be a fun course or you hate it,” he said. “Today is probably about middle. Eighty is a pretty good score and you can’t be too mad about it.”

At least for one day, anyway.