The Brown & White

The men's golf team will travel to West Point, N.Y. this weekend to compete in the 2009 Patriot League Championship.

The championship will be held at the U.S. Military Academy's West Point Golf Course. The format is a two-day, 54-hole tournament, with 36 holes of play on Saturday and 18 holes scheduled for Sunday.

The team this season is led by three upperclassmen that have had strong performances all year: seniors Will Robinson and Shane Gilroy, and junior Steve Suarez.

Gilroy said all three players have been equal in their playing and leading the team this season.

"The parity between me, Will Robinson and Steve Suarez can be seen in our scoring averages," Gilroy said. "Over 17 tournament rounds we are all separated by one stroke. Will and I are averaging 77.24 and Steve is averaging 77.29."

Last season, the Hawks battled their way out of a fifth place finish on the first day of competition to shoot a 318 and finish third overall at the 2008 Patriot League Championship, played on the Grace Course at Saucon Valley Country Club.

The Hawks fell to the Bucknell University Bison who placed second and the Navy Midshipmen who took the title last year.

Robinson, Suarez and Gilroy all placed in the top 15 individually along with the Hawks shooting the third lowest score in the final round, just one stroke behind Bucknell.

Lehigh competed in the Lafayette tournament three weekends ago which had league opponents Colgate, Bucknell and Lafayette in the field. Last weekend at the Navy Invitational the Hawks were in 3rd place out of 18 teams going into the final round and ended up finishing 8th and overall strong performance for the squad.

Gilroy said the team is not worried about another blowout by Navy this year and hopes that previous tournament wins this season are going to help them this weekend.

"Last year we came in third place in the Patriot League tournament but we really were not in contention because Navy ran away with the title," Gilroy said. "We are hoping that our tournament win three weeks ago will help us perform well down the home stretch this coming weekend."

The league champion after the weekend match will earn the Patriot League's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Gilroy said the squad has been looking forward to the opportunity to get into the NCAA tournament all season.

"This upcoming Patriot League Championship at West Point is what we have been gearing up for this spring," Gilroy said. "A victory this weekend would grant us an automatic bid into the tournament, which is what our goal has been the entire season. The team has been working extremely hard this spring in hopes of peaking this weekend."

Gilroy said the team has been tightening up all aspects of their game in preparation for this weekend's competition.

"Our team as a whole has been working extremely hard on our short games," Gilroy said. "Our coach has been stressing putting and chipping for the past two years and it has finally clicked with all of us that it is the most important area of the game. Hopefully this weekend we will see it pay off."