Luke Schneider and Tyler Wilks got off to rocky starts on Wednesday, and as a result, the Columbus North golfers were unable to make up any ground on the rest of the field in the Circle K Junior Championship hosted by Otter Creek.
Schneider, who carded a 78 in Tuesday’s opening round, had an 80 on Wednesday and is in 41st place at 14-over-par going into today’s final round. Wilks shot 81 for the second consecutive day and is tied for 44th at 18-over.
"I hit it awful. It should have been a lot worse, really. My short game was saving me. I just couldn’t find any swing. I didn’t know where my driver was going, didn’t know where my irons were going. I was kind of pulling everything left on the par-3s."
Schneider double-bogeyed the first hole on both nines. He shot 42 on the front and improved to 38 on the back, thanks to birdies on Nos. 11 and 16.
"The back nine was a little better," Schneider said. "I still had two dumb bogeys from the fairway from 100 yards away."
Wilks went 42-39. He was 6-over through seven holes before playing the final 11 holes in only 3-over.
"I started off, and I couldn’t hit a green or a fairway," Wilks said. "I think I found something in my swing. I’m making good contact on the back nine and didn’t really on the front. On the back nine, I just got my swing feeling softer, and I just felt like I had more fun on the back nine."
Camden Smith of Windermere, Florida, holds a six-shot lead at 6-under 138. Shoji Fujita of Carmel, Ray Filter of Crown Point, Peter Sheakley of Cincinnati and Dominic Scaletta of Inverness, Illinois, are tied for second at even-par 144.
Charlene Chung of Hong Kong and Maggie Ni of Cypress, Texas, share the lead in the girls division at 2-under 142. Madison Dabagia of Fort Wayne is one shot back at 1-under 143.
Wilks will tee off at 7:10 a.m. on No. 10, and Schneider will follow at 7:20 a.m., also on No. 10, in today’s final round. After he was done on Wednesday, Schneider was headed to the practice range to try to fix his swing.
"I’ll see what I can do in the morning," Schneider said. "I just have to figure some things out because my swing was not where I wanted it to be at all."
