On Par

The annual Bart Granger Memorial Tournament has a reputation - one it deserves. The two-day event is the largest high school golf tournament in the country, and arguably one of the most prestigious. Paschal High School hosts the tournament each year. The event is named after a former PHS golfer who was killed in a car accident in 1997. The tournament has ballooned into a field of more than 250 teams from across all classes and several states. Perhaps one of the most amazing things about the tournament is that the team winner of the event has gone on to win a state title for ten consecutive years. That bodes well for Austin Westlake, which won the tournament with a team total of 855, 14 strokes better than runner-up Highland Park. The best finish for a local school was Mansfield, which finished fourth with an 874 total, two shots back of third-place Hamilton. Trampis Wilson, first-year head golf coach at Mansfield, is plenty familiar with the Bart Granger; he was the head coach at Paschal previously and coordinated the tournament. This year, he helped some with the planning, but could primarily focus on simply bringing a team to play. "The big thing we talked about afterward is that we finished fourth in the biggest high school tournament in the country, and we didn't play as well as we could," Wilson said. "If we fire on all cylinders and get the No. 1 guy going like we know he can, I think the sky is the limit for this team." Mansfield was paced by Greg Yates, who finished fourth overall in the individual standings, firing a three-round total of 213. "He played two good rounds and one mediocre round, for him," Wilson said. "But you finish top-four in the biggest high school tournament in the country, you've got to walk away from it feeling pretty good." And Yates did feel good, though he admitted he'd like to have done even better. "I go into every tournament to win it," he said. "But it's a big deal [finishing well in the Bart Granger] because it's not just the 5A state tournament. It's the biggest in the state and in the country. It's 5A, 4A, teams from Arizona..." Highland Park's Cody Gribble won the individual title, shooting three sub-70 rounds for a total of 199. Aledo's Taylor Mihok placed eighth on the strength of his 215. Hebron's Scott Newton was 11th, while Henry Todd of Northwest and Kolton Crawford of Mansfield finished tied for 12th. Hebron finished sixth as a team and Northwest finished 11th. -