DADE CITY, Fla. - The No. 5 Lee men's golf team started the 2023 Spring Season in style with four-stroke victory over host Nova Southeastern at the Saint Leo Invitational. At the Lake Jovita Golf & Country Club on Tuesday, Beck Burnette paced the Flames shooting a 206 over the three rounds for ten-under par leading to his fifth career victory. The Flames have now won back-to-back tournaments at the Saint Leo Invitational. It is also back-to-back-wins on the season as the Flames won their final tournament in 2022.
The Flames shot a 284 as a team in round one. Then in rounds two and three they shot a 279 each time. Dustin DeMesserman shot his career low round of 66 twice. He finished tied for third with a 208 (-8). Connor Pollman shot his career low 65 in round one. He finished the tournament with a even par 216 tied for 21st.
Bennet McNabb finished tied for 35th with a score of 220. Oliver Lewis-Perkins was tied for 39th with a score of 221 (+5). The final round was career round number 109 for Connor, making him first for career rounds played in team history.
Nova Southeastern finished four strokes back with a score of 846. Carson Newman came in third 14 shots back at 856.
Head Coach John Maupin was super excited about his teams play this week. ""Obviously a great start to the season this week. Felt great to get the team win, but really I'm proud of how prepared each of these guys were. They've been grinding on some tough days the past month and a half, but it paid off. So, just really proud of them all on that end."
Just looking across the board, I love the production we got top to bottom. Connor shoots his career best round and carries us in Round 1, Bennett gives us two really good rounds to finish it off, Ollie didn't play his best this week, but still finished with a good final round to help us pull it out. Dustin was just absolutely fantastic those last 36 holes…that's as good a stretch of golf as you'll see. I am so happy for him, he was very determined to play a great round after Round 1 and man, did he ever come back strong."
I'm running out of adjectives for Beck….his standard is very high. We won't take him for granted ever though….he is a rock for us. It's amazing to see how good he's gotten at putting himself in contention each week. That is career win #5 for him….impressive stuff. Also want to give a shout out to Coach Alex Naumovski this week. We led par three scoring by ten shots this week and she was a big reason why."
"I want to see us build on this, certainly a long season and plenty of challenges ahead. There's plenty of things we can clean up before our next one," Maupin concluded.
The Flames will return to action March 5-7 at the Las Vegas Desert Classic in Las Vegas, Nevada.
