The University of Rhode Island men’s golf team led from start to finish in the semifinal and championship matches at the Dragon Match Play Invitational this week on its way to its fifth victory of the year.

Rhode Island traveled to Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania for the event, which was broken into two different segments. The eight-team field played two rounds of stroke play on Monday to determine the bracket for the match play portion on Tuesday.

The Rams found themselves in an early hole on the leaderboard on Monday morning. Following the opening round, URI sat 15-over as a team and in sixth place, nine shots behind the leader, Drexel University.

Rhody stormed back in the second round, where they shot nine-under to catapult into first place with a nine-shot cushion over second-place finisher, Longwood University. Along with a 24-shot improvement from their opening round, the Rams were 14 shots better than anyone else in the field in the second round.

First-year Tyler Bruneau led the charge, bouncing back from a rough opening round where he shot nine-over and didn’t make a single birdie. He opened his second round with a birdie and didn’t look back from there, making four more on his way to finishing three-under for the round and tied-15th on the leaderboard.

“The round got away from Tyler in the morning,” URI Head Coach Gregg Burke said. “He has to handle bad swings and bad holes better, but he’s growing by leaps and bounds in doing that. Him shooting 68 after the 80 doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

After shooting the best score on the team in the opening round, third-year Aidan O’Donovan came out firing in round two with three consecutive birdies. Despite a rough patch of three bogeys in the span of five holes on the back nine, he still closed his round at one-under and even for the tournament, which placed him tied for second on the individual leaderboard.

“[O’Donovan] is a tough kid; when he’s focused, he’s as good as anyone on the team,” Burke said. “He came here with a sense of purpose and he showed it with his mental play.”

Four of the five members of the Rams shot in red figures in the second round on their way to securing the top seed in the championship bracket on Tuesday. They were matched up against Atlantic 10 Conference foe Saint Joseph’s University in the semifinals, providing a look at some of the competition they will face at the conference tournament on April 22-24.

Although playing a different format, Rhode Island maintained its momentum from Monday, jumping out to a lead in four of the five matches against Saint Joseph’s on Tuesday morning. Three of these four leads were never relinquished, as the Rams defeated the Hawks 3.5-1.5 to advance to the championship match.

In the championship match, the Rams faced off against Longwood, who already had two tournament wins over Rhode Island during the spring semester. This time was a different story, however, as URI once again jumped out to an early lead and stayed in control from there on its way to another 3.5-1.5 victory.

“We really wanted [to play] Longwood because they’ve won three tournaments this semester and they’ve beaten us in two of them,” Burke said. “Once we found out it was Longwood, we knew it was over. We were not going to be denied.”

The first-year duo of Bruneau and Luke Stennett set the tone in their matches, with both taking commanding leads on the front nine. Stennett found himself five-up through 10 holes in route to a four and three win, meaning he had a four-hole lead with three holes to play, while Bruneau won the first four holes of his match and secured a six and five victory.

“The idea [behind sending Bruneau and Stennett out first] was we were going to get at least two of the first three points, which we did both times,” Burke said. “We wanted to punch the opponent in the mouth early and make a statement: ‘Now come catch us with your other guys.’”

O’Donvan locked up the win with a commanding five and four triumph in his match, giving the Rams their first tournament win of the spring season and fifth of the academic year.

“We won the tournament, we did what we came down here to do,” Burke said. “I told the guys before the tournament, ‘We didn’t come down here for the cheesesteaks.’ We played exceptionally well, and we got what we wanted moving forward.”

Next up, the Rams will look to maintain their momentum at The Rutherford Intercollegiate this weekend in one final tune-up before the A-10 Championship.

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