Brock’s an early lock in the sunshine state: Elder leads Greensboro golf in Florida

Haines City, Fla. — Brock Elder (Greensboro, NC/Vandalia Christian) shot a team-low 68 and led the Greensboro College golf team to a first round 282 (minus 6) to lead after round one of the GolfWeek Invitatinoal on Sunday.

The Pride, ranked seventh in the nation, are eight strokes ahead of a prestigious field at the Southern Dunes Golf & Country Club. Elder is tied for first place with Ricky Boerner of Wittenberg Univ. and Huntingdon’s J.P. Kircher.

GC junior Ben Nihart (Winston-Salem, NC/(home school)) is one stroke back and tied with two other players for fourth place. Other GC scoring: Connor Kennedy (Siler City, NC/Jordan Matthews High School) 71, T9; Clint Dillon (Madison, NC/Dalton L. McMichael), 74, T26; Josh Nichols (Waxhaw, NC/West Fosyth), 80, T69.

Closest behind Greensboro are second place Skidmore and Concordia (Minn.), which carded a 290s. The elite field includes eight teams from the from the Golfweek top 25 preseason poll.

Twelve of the 15 clubs at the event are in the tournament are in the rankings: Methodist, #1; Huntingdon, #2; Oglethorpe Univ., #6; GC, #7; Texas @ Tyler, #8; Wittenberg Univ., #9; Skidmore College, #10; Illinois Wesleyan, #12; Emory University, #14; Rhodes College, #17; Transylvania U., #20; Southwestern Univ., #22.t

The event continues on Monday and concludes Tuesday.