FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Junior Sampson Zheng shot a 3-over-par 75 to pace the California men's golf team in the opening round of the Blessings Collegiate Invitational on Monday at Blessings Golf Club.
 
The Golden Bears collectively sit in 11th place out of 11 teams after carding a 21-over-par 309 through 18 holes played. Host and reigning champion Arkansas (-4) and Kansas (-2) own the top two spots on the team leaderboard while Texas A&M and Clemson are tied for third at 4-over-par after the first round. Cal will enter Tuesday's second round two strokes behind 10th-place UCF (+19) and five strokes behind Pac-12 foe UCLA (+16).
 
Cal's five golfers, who started on the 10th hole Monday, battled through a difficult back nine before settling into an improved team effort on the front nine. Zheng sank a team-high four birdies during the round to earn a tie for 26th individually. Freshman Nathan Wang was 1-under-par on the front nine, tallying birdies on hole 2 and hole 8 to climb up the individual leaderboard into a tie for 34th after shooting 4-over-par on the back nine.
 
Aaron Du and Jeewon Park are tied for 47th at 7-over-par (79) while Tony Chen is tied for 52th after an 8-over-par 80.
 

Place	Name	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Total
T-26	Sampson Zheng	75 (+3)			75 (+3)
T-34	Nathan Wang	76 (+4)			76 (+4)
T-47	Aaron Du	79 (+7)			79 (+7)
T-47	Jeewon Park	79 (+7)			79 (+7)
T-52	Tony Chen	80 (+8)			80 (+8)

 
UP NEXT
The Bears will start round two of the Blessings Collegiate Invitational on the first hole at 9 a.m. PT Tuesday. Live scoring will be available in real time on GolfStat.com, while Golf Channel will televise the round from 1-4:30 p.m. PT.
 
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