South Elgin's Owens wins Larkin Invitational

South Elgin's Xavier Owens was clearly primed for the boys golf season to begin.

In his first action of the fall season Wednesday, the senior fired a 3-under-par 69 at the Highlands of Elgin to win medalist honors at the 23-team Larkin Invitational.

Owens birdied seven holes en route to tying his career-best round, including birdies on three of the course's four Par-5 holes. Such scoring offset two bogeys and a double bogey, allowing Owens to nip Tee-K Kelly of Wheaton Warrenville South by a stroke.

“I know that bogeys are going to come because it's hard not to have a bogey out there,” Owens said of a layout recently rated the top municipal course in Illinois by GolfWeek Magazine. “I just tried to make up for it with birdies on the par fives. I snuck a couple of more birdies in there on the Par fours and another on a Par 3.

“It was a good way to start. I'm very happy with the way I played.”

One of Owens' best shots of the day came on No. 1, a Par 4. After a solid drive found the fairway, he used a 60-degree wedge to place the ball within 3 feet of the cup.

Kelly's Tigers (307) finished second in the team standings only to Oak Park-River Forest (303). Geneva was third (309), followed by Batavia (312), St. Edward (324), DeKalb (325), Lake Park (328), South Elgin (330) and Palatine (330).

Also helping Wheaton Warrenville South cement its second-place finish were Christian Westergaard (78), Will Kelly (79) and Nick Popejoy (80).

“We had a sophomore shoot 78, a freshman shoot 79 and a senior shoot 80,” Tigers coach James Selleck noted. “And it was nice to see Tee-K finish under par. The whole team played solid golf with good focus and they finished real consistently. I'm proud of them. We'll go from here.”

Motivated Oak Park-River Forest secured the team title, thanks to consistent scoring.

“We finished second last year, so we were hoping to do a little bit better,” said Joe McKune, who tied teammate Alex Decorrevant with a 74. “Our top four guys all shot in the seventies, so it was good enough, I guess.”

Geneva took third as a team, thanks to low scores from Pat Cuscaden (75), Matt Landry (76), Collin Lilliebridge (76) and Bill Gregory (82).

“It was tough out there,” Cuscaden said. “The greens were running really fast and it was tough to putt sometimes. You just had to play it safe. There were a lot of bunkers out there, a lot of hazards. If you played it safe, you could shoot low, which was what I tried to do.”

Other top individuals behind Owens and Kelley included Batavia's Nathan Podraza (72), Burlington Central's Matt Weber (73), Michael Holevas of St. Edward (75) Dan McGrail of Brother Rice (75), DeKalb's Zack Price (75) and Ryan Wolfe of Bartlett (76)

“There were a lot of scoring opportunities out there, but I didn't really hit the ball that well off the tee,” said Wolfe, Bartlett's low man. “It's the same thing I did (Tuesday at Glendale Lakes), but my putting wasn't too bad.

Bartlett, without its Nos. 3 and 4 golfers in attendance, finished 14th. Host Larkin finished 18th.