WOOD RIVER – Edwardsville's Ben Tyrell showed he is in solid form to begin the 2017 high school golf season on Thursday.
Tyrell fired a 3-under 69 at the par-72 Belk Park Golf Course to take large-school medalist honors at the Madison County Boys Golf Championship on Thursday, tying with Marquette's Jack Patterson for the lowest score of the day.
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“I played much better than the other day,” Tyrell, a senior, said. “Today I started out pretty good, towards the middle was kind of rough, but at the end, I birdied five of the last six holes, so that helped my score overall; there's a few other things I need to work on, so hopefully we'll keep getting them good.”
Tyrell is also coming back from what could have been a very serious accident during a visit to the Lake of the Ozarks recently; he had to abandon his watercraft while out on the lake when a boat was coming towards him. The boat wound up hitting him in the head; Tyrell had to take stitches to close a wound on his head, but he was otherwise all right.
“I'm just happy to be here,” Tyrell said.
Tyrell still feels he needs to work parts of his game. “A little bit of everything,” Tyrell said of what aspects he needs work on. “My ball striking is pretty good right now; a few drives are a little right – I need to work on that a little bit – but my putting is good. I missed a few shorter putts that I should have made, but other than that, my putting's good.”
Conditions on the course were good Thursday, Tyrell felt. “The course was in great shape,” Tyrell said. “The greens were rolling great and the fairways were excellent; I love this course.”
Tyrell's hopes for the remainder of the season are simple: “I hope to win some more tournaments, then we'll see what happens in the postseason,” Tyrell said. “I'll keep trying to lower my scores.”
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Feeney, 56, is a native of Granite City and graduated from Granite City South in 1978. He was a part-time writer for the old Granite City Journal from 1979-84 before attending Eastern Illinois University in Charleston,
from which he earned his BA in journalism in 1988. He has worked for newspapers in Sikeston, Mo., Rocky Mount, N.C., Seneca, S.C. and in Charleston-Mattoon. He also worked for the old St. Clair County Suburban
Journals.
