William & Mary men’s golf will compete in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Championships beginning April 26 at the Dataw Island Club in St. Helena Island, South Carolina. The three-day event features 18 holes each day, with tee times starting at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday and Monday and an earlier start of 8 a.m. for Tuesday’s final round.
The CAA Championships bring together ten teams: William & Mary, Campbell, Charleston, Drexel, Elon, Hofstra, Monmouth, North Carolina A&T, UNCW, and Towson. William & Mary’s lineup includes Preston Burton, Talon Dingledine, Eli Felty, Matthew Monastero, and Grady Williams.
Recent history shows that William & Mary has placed in the top four in three of the last six conference championships. The team’s most recent top-three finish was as runner-up in 2015 with a team score of 893. Since first competing in the CAA Championships in 1984, William & Mary’s only conference title came in 1985. Their best team score at this event was recorded in 2002 when they shot five-under par; current head coach Tim Pemberton led that effort with a two-under-par performance.
In their last outing before the championships—the West Virginia Mountaineer Invitational—the Tribe posted its best round on the final day with a score of 295 (+7), finishing sixteenth overall out of participating teams. Graduate student Matthew Monastero led William & Mary individually by finishing fifty-fifth overall with a total score of +7 across three rounds and notching eleven birdies.
This season has seen several highlights for William & Mary men’s golf: they have won both the Golden Horseshoe Intercollegiate and ODU/OBX Intercollegiate tournaments—marking just the sixth time in school history that multiple tournament wins were achieved during one season and first since 2004-05. As of April 20th rankings from NCAA Division I placed them at No.139 nationally after reaching as high as No.121 earlier this year.
Individual performances have also stood out: freshman Talon Dingledine has finished among the top ten players six times this season—including two top-five results—with his scoring average ranking second-best all-time for Tribe golfers; fellow freshman Eli Felty recently secured his second top-five finish; junior Preston Burton has played twelve rounds at par or better this year.
