SARASOTA, Fla. — Brayden Bare is tied for fourth place and only one shot off the individual lead, while UTSA has a share of fifth after the opening round of the American Athletic Conference Men’s Golf Championship, which teed off Monday at Ritz-Carlton Members Club (par 72/7,292 yards).
Bare fired his best round as a Roadrunner with a 4-under-par 68, which has him one stroke behind a three-way tie for first at 5-under par. Logan Vargas also posted a red number with a 1-under 71 that has him in a tie for 14th, helping lead the Roadrunners to an even-par 288, good for a fifth-place deadlock with Florida Atlantic and Rice.
UTSA is one shot ahead of East Carolina, three in front of UAB, four better than Wichita State and 11 clear of Temple with 36 hole left to play over the next two days. The Roadrunners trail North Texas by only three strokes and are four behind third-place and No. 44 Charlotte in the 11-team race led by No. 33 South Florida (-9). Memphis is in second at 5-under par.
Bare’s career scorecard featured five birdies and guided the redshirt sophomore to the program’s best individual round at a conference tournament since 2021 when Chad Sewell posted a 68 in the first round of the Conference USA Championship. It bettered his previous career best of 69 turned in for the second round of his UTSA debut at the 2022 John Bohmann Memorial Invitational.
Starting on No. 10, Bare quickly moved to 3-under par with three birdies in a row, as the Waco native had a four on the 560-yard 11th, a three on the 449-yard 12th and a two on the 226-yard 13th. He closed the back side of the course with five pars en route to a 33 before moving to the front where he logged two more pars. He then settled for his only bogey of the day on the third but quickly countered with a four on the 535-yard fourth. He also circled his number on the 540-yard, par-5 sixth to get to 4-under, where he stayed by closing with a trio of pars.
Meanwhile, Vargas recorded three birdies during his opening-round 71 as one of 19 players with a red number on the day. Teeing off from No. 10, the junior from Lubbock bounced back from a 38 on the back with birdies on the 535-yard, par-5 fourth, the 448-yard, par-4 eighth and the 470-yard, par-4 ninth as part of a bogey-free 33 on the front. It marked his fifth par-or-better scorecard of the season and his best score since also carding a 71 in the final round of the Trinity Forest Invitational last fall.
Walker Franklin is tied for 31st after posting a 74 that was highlighted by a trio of birdies, including a three on the senior from Colorado’s opening hole, the 441-yard 10th.
Jack Wehman and Logan Zurn round out the UTSA lineup in a tie for 36th after each tallied a 75. Wehman, an Austin native, had a pair of birdies over a four-hole stretch on the back, while Zurn, who hails from Grapevine, logged two birdies on the front.
The second round is slated for Tuesday and the Roadrunners will tee off from No. 1 beginning at 7:30 a.m. CT.
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