Her round was over and Kaylee Gossen of Marshall appeared a lock to get back to the high school golf state tournament.
After a first round score of 86 last week put her in fifth place among individuals at the Class 2A, Section 3 tournament in Buffalo Lake , Gossen did even better on Tuesday. She turned in an 82, for a team-low performance good enough for a return to Ridges at Sand Creek in Jordan on June 13 for the second consecutive year, and hopefully a better finish.
That is, until she started to re-think what happened on hole No. 16 at Oakdale Golf Course.
"I played the hole in my head about 500 times yesterday,'' Gossen, a junior in her third year on Marshall's varsity, said Wednesday afternoon.
After finishing the par-4 hole, Gossen told her playing partners from Morris and New Ulm that she got a double-bogey six. They agreed. Gossen then recovered with a par on 17 and finished with a bogey on 18.
When the trio of golfers sat down afterward and signed their scorecards, Gossen's 82 was the best of any Marshall player. With scores posted by her and teammate Ana Schwarz, their team was on the bubble for qualifying for state as well.
"Kaylee's a really smart golfer, really on top of things,'' said Gretchen Flynn, the Marshall girls' golf coach. "You'd never assume her score is not right.''
After everyone had completed play, Gossen met up with Flynn and her parents, who had followed her around the course. Flynn, admittedly unsure of her totals, had Gossen at 81. Mom and dad, who watched their daughter at a distance during the round, thought she had an 83. Kaylee's card said 82. When she compared it hole-by-hole with her parents' scorecard, they differed on just one hole.
