JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- In tournament golf, the next to last day of a championship is called 'moving day'. Saturday on the Gold Course at Paradise Point, the Bridgewater men's golf team shot 305 to leap five spots in the Camp Lejeune Collegiate, giving them the biggest jump of moving day.
 
Despite very high winds and a delay for a brief storm, the Eagles turned in one of their best performances of the season, and 305 was the seventh best score of the day in a field of 20 strong DIII teams. Paired for the second day in a row with Methodist (#3 in the nation), the Eagles were leading the Monarchs with just four holes to play. Methodist finished at 302 and they sit in fourth place in the championship. The Eagles jumped to 11th.
 
"Based on Jekyll a couple weeks ago and what we have done at Lejeune so far, it's an easy conclusion -- we are getting better," said head coach John Rogers. "The second round at Jekyll was the toughest conditions and we made our move that day, and today was the same. We still have work to do tomorrow, but it's very satisfying to look at the board and see our name above six colleges ranked well ahead of us nationally. Today the guys beat two teams ranked inside the top-45, and almost matched the powerhouse team from Methodist, so it's obvious things are starting to come together."
 
One of the keys to the Eagles' strong performance Saturday was a bounce-back round by Jack Thome. The freshman followed his worst collegiate score on Friday (86), with his best on Saturday, a 74 that was tied for the 9th best score of the day, among 100 players. Paired with one of the top players in the nation, Thome was the low score in his group and he jumped 26 spots on the leaderboard. "I hit the ball better today on the holes where I needed to hit it well, and I made a lot of good par putts," he said. Thome played his inward nine at even par despite a double bogey after the rain delay.
 
Max Bondurant continues to assert himself as a top-tier collegiate player, and he finds himself in 18th place after a second round score of 73. The sophomore started the day by dropping a 9-footer for birdie on #10 despite winds in the 20-30 mph range, and then he dropped a 25-foot side-winder on #11 for a second birdie. After five birdies today, Bondurant is tied for 8th in a field of 100 players with seven birdies on the week.
 
Hayden Hawes and Logan Douthat came in with a pair of 79s to round out the team score for Bridgewater. Hawes played a scrappy round, hanging on despite being +5 through six holes. He hit some very good bunker shots and closed the round with five much-needed pars.
 
Douthat birdied his ninth hole to turn at -1 and was still just +2 through fourteen holes; that was when he took a couple risks navigating trees on his next two approach shots, and he ended up dropping five strokes. Rogers pointed out that Douthat is a good tournament player and just needs to hone a couple skills to consistently produce low scores.
 
Freshman Brandon Washburn was frustrated with his short game on Saturday, and he had 42 putts on his way to a tally of 87 strokes.
 
"After the round yesterday, we had a team meeting and discussed what separates some of the top teams from us," said Rogers. "and we saw that we were near the top of the field in making pars. But where we would have some blow-up holes the elite teams were instead making more birdies. We did not think we had to make a bunch of birdies, but we definitely had to get better at minimizing the bad holes. Well we went ahead and made eight more birdies in the second round, despite the conditions being tougher." The head coach went on to say the good round Saturday sets the stage for a fun finish as the Eagles now get to play with higher ranked teams in the finale.
 
The final round of the Camp Lejeune Collegiate starts at 8:30 Sunday morning.