Amherst Regional senior Evan Rutherford shot an 8-over-par 80 and tied for 21st at the State Division 1 Golf Championship at Haven Country Club in Boylston on Monday.
“(My performance) was about right where I thought it was going to be,” Rutherford said. “I kind of knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be able to match up with some of the eastern Mass. kids. They’re nuts. I thought I played pretty well.”
Weston Jones won medalist honors with a 2-under 70 for team champion Lincoln-Sudbury. Michael Thorbjornsen, of Wellesley, was runner-up with a 71. Thorbjornsen was the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur champion.
Rutherford qualified for the championship by placing first at the Western Mass. championship at Southampton Country Club on Oct. 21.
Conditions at Monday’s championship were wet and dreary. He had six bogeys and one double bogey.
“With the course being wet, I hit the ball pretty far off the tee,” Rutherford said. “I was able to use that to my advantage – just hitting the ball as far as possible out there. I had trouble on the greens and reading it at times.”
Rutherford has seen his game improve during each of the four seasons he played at Amherst.
“I’m a completely different player than I was as a freshman. A lot smarter,” Rutherford said. “My strengths have been strengthened but my weaknesses have been pulled up too. As a team we’ve gotten better every year.”
Carl Vigeland joined the program as coach at the beginning of Rutherford’s freshman year. He has seen how Rutherford’s personality feeds into his golf and leadership ability.
“(Evan) is very articulate about golf,” Vigeland said. “It’s not an accident when he plays a great round. Beyond that, in terms of his personality, he knows how to keep the kids loose, but not crazy. We don’t have food fights in the van, we have fun, but not at the expense of anyone. Evan and his personality has been able to show the kids, on the one hand, it’s great to let go and release tension, but golf is a tense sport at the same time. He can be loose, but at the same time, be focused.”
Rutherford was the Hurricanes’ No. 1 golfer this season and helped lead the team to a 16-1 record.
“I knew I could count on him,” Vigeland said. “His average for the whole year was like 39. … That is what he would shoot. I could almost pencil his score in, where with a lot of people, you could shoot 80 one day and try hard to break 90 the next day. … He was always good, even as a ninth grader.”
Smith Academy senior Daniel Cavanaugh shot a 14-over 86 and tied for 42nd at the state Division 3 championship at Cranberry Valley Golf Course in Harwich.
Cavanaugh’s goal coming into the championship was to “break mid-high 70s.”
“He started off really well,” Smith Academy coach Matt Zerneri said. “Just to be able to play in that tournament is something a lot of kids cant say they have done.”
Cooper Evans of Dover-Sherborn and Colin Spencer of Mashpee tied for first at 1-under 71. Evans won the championship in a playoff.
Cavanaugh qualified by placing fifth at the Western Mass. championship at Agawam Municipal Golf Course on Oct. 21.
Cavanaugh was 6 over through 14 holes on Monday, but had trouble on the back end of the course.
A practice round was scheduled to take place on Sunday, but was cancelled due to weather. Going into the championship without a solid idea of the course gave Cavanaugh some issues down the stretch.
“The layouts were kind of whack,” Cavanaugh said. “You had to play it to know what was going on.”
Smith Academy had six golfers on its roster to start the season. The team went into some matches during the regular season knowing that they did not have enough players to win. Despite having a rough year from a team perspective, Cavanaugh still had fun playing with his friend Colin Ferrara and the rest of his teammates.
Cavanaugh has competed for the Falcons since he was in eighth grade and played a part in the team’s 13-1 regular season in 2017.
In his two years as coach, and years prior as an assistant, Zerneri saw that Cavanaugh had the right mindset from a young age to become a well-rounded player.
“You could tell he was someone that loved the game of golf,” Zerneri said. “Always wants to play and always get better. He loved it as a young kid. … He has gotten better every year — just happy to have him as a part of the program.”
The state championship will be played Tuesday at Taconic Golf Course in Williamstown with a 10 a.m. shotgun start.
Logan Waite, of South Hadley, Mikey Corduff and Gunnar Moore, of Frontier Regional and Amherst resident Logan Dapprich, who competes for Pope Francis, are set to compete.