The University of Alabama men’s golf team finished 12th Tuesday without freshman Bobby Wyatt in the lineup at the Callaway Collegiate Match Play Championship.

Wyatt is the second-highest ranked player for the Tide at No. 19, according to the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings. He is currently out with a left shoulder injury and is expected to be out for the rest of the regular season. Head coach Jay Seawell said he believes Wyatt will be back to practicing before the Southeastern Conference Championships and be able to participate in the event in April.

“We missed [Wyatt] a fair amount,” freshman Cory Whitsett said. “He’s been a pretty reliable contributor all year. Any time a team is missing its second-ranked best player, it’s a big loss. Unfortunately, that’s the way it goes sometimes, and we just have to try and make the best of it.”

The Golfweek/Sagarin No. 3-ranked Tide members said they were not used to the match play style of golf since they usually play stroke play, though they agree that it was good experience.

“We need to get in there and introduce our players to this style, since the championships are now determined this way,” Seawell said. “We didn’t handle it very well. It’s a different way of playing golf and a different mindset. At least now we have it in our minds what that kind of format is. We’ll be practicing that kind of style some, but we are concentrating on playing golf stroke play.”

The NCAA Regionals are now a mixture of stroke and match play style golf. The Tide is looking forward to trying its hand at match play again.

“We just don’t play a lot of match play,” Whitsett said. “It’s definitely a different way of pairing and this will help us get ready for the NCAAs.”

The Tide split its matches during the first round. Junior Bud Cauley and Whitsett finished by winning both of their matches.

The Tide ended the second round against Iowa by winning only one match by junior Hunter Hamrick.

“[Iowa] has a very good team,” Seawell said. “They played better than us and came away with a win. I think it was a case of a good team playing another good team.”

In the final round, the Tide lost to Pacific. Cauley, Whitsett and Trey Mullinax earned halves, while Hamrick and Strohmeyer lost their matches.

The Tide is looking forward to completing its busy schedule. The team has a tournament every week for three weeks, with this past week at the Callaway Match Play Championships being the first.

“The schedule is going to let us know what we are made of and how tough we are,” Whitsett said. “Any time you are playing three weeks in a row, you have to be resilient. You just have to go out, try to play well and improve every single round.”

The Tide will be competing at the Linger Longer Invitational in Greensboro, Ga., on March 27-29.