Mason County’s Mason Butler lines up a putt during the Mason County Invitational earlier in the season. Butler and the Royals head to Lexington on Saturday to play in the KGCA All-State Championship. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

Mason County’s Mason Butler lines up a putt during the Mason County Invitational earlier in the season. Butler and the Royals head to Lexington on Saturday to play in the KGCA All-State Championship. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

HIGH SCHOOL GOLF

<p>Mason County’s Grant Owens reads the green during the Mason County Invitational. Owens enters as the No. 3 golfer this weekend in Lexington. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)</p>

Mason County’s Grant Owens reads the green during the Mason County Invitational. Owens enters as the No. 3 golfer this weekend in Lexington. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

After a grueling stretch to start the season mixed in with some adversity, Mason County’s boys golf team is ready for one last push.

The Royals hope Saturday is what starts what will be a pretty busy three-week stretch beginning with the KGCA All-State championship at the UK Club in Lexington. It’s a 36-hole tournament where the Royals will compete with the top 15 teams in the state based off points they’ve earned in tournaments throughout the 2021 season. They’ll start on the Wildcat course on Saturday and finish on the Big Blue course on Sunday.

Logan Shepherd, Mason Butler, Grant Owens, Kaden Grooms and Jake Feldhaus will be the ones competing.

“It will be the best field of the year this weekend. There’s no time for any more bad rounds, the guys are pumped about it and ready for the challenge,” Royals coach Jordan Gilbert said. “The state tournament limits teams that have loaded regions, so this tournament truly is the top 15 teams in the state.”

They won’t have much time to rest from there as they head to Owensboro after the end of Sunday’s tournament to play in the Kentucky 2A Championships at Owensboro Country Club on Monday. The Royals qualified for the inaugural 2A tournament as champions of Section 5 and will play against seven other schools that qualified in the 18-hole tournament.

Based off All-State points in tournament play, the Royals will be one of the favorites to win it, Christian Academy of Louisville looking like the team to beat.

The 12th Region tournament follows on September 27 when the Royals host at Laurel Oaks. They have to win that one to advance to the state tournament in Bowling Green the following week as a team, something the Royals were able to achieve last season for the first time since 2015, when they won the 12th Region at Eagle Trace in Morehead.

After a hot start to the season, the Royals have cooled off lately. They opened with either a first or second place finish in their first nine of 11 tournaments. But have since missed out on the top five in their last two tournaments, shooting 318 and 319, respectively. They’ve taken a bit of a break in tournament play, those two tournaments the only ones played in the last three weeks.

The team has also endured a coaching change, when Chad Mefford had to step down earlier in the season due to health reasons.

The break in tournament play has allowed them to recharge the batteries, hone in on certain areas in practice in preparation for the final stretch. Shepherd, Butler and Grooms are seniors and this isn’t their first rodeo. The three helped the Royals win a regional title last season and finish seventh at the state tournament. All three know this is their final stretch and Gilbert has noticed in practice a sense of urgency among the three. All three have played a key part in the team’s success since at least their freshman year.

“They’ve bought in, practiced hard. They’ve been working on things and hopefully their competitive mindset and want to get better pays off. These seniors have set the bar. Playing in All-State the last few years, the 2A this year…it gives them the sense of high level golf before we get to region and state and puts them in a position to succeed,” Gilbert said.

Owens and Feldhaus will be making their first appearances in these settings, but the two have remained consistent throughout the majority of the season to stay within the top five on the team with others knocking on the door. Both are capable of carding a low number as each have led the way for the team in a tournament at some point during the season.

Gilbert said the key to competing at a high level over the next few weeks is avoiding the high number on a hole and letting that linger through the rest of the round, a culprit of the higher scores their past two rounds.

“Last two tournaments we haven’t had our best performance. Just making big numbers in the middle of a round. Some have had great starts, being close to or below even par and then get a big number and that gets you. Sometimes you just have to reset your brain,” Gilbert said. “But these guys like to respond to competition and we’ve done some things to keep things competitive in practice.”

A chance to continue to make their name across the state lies ahead for the Royals the next few weeks. The end goal is to repeat in region and improve off last year’s seventh place finish at the state tournament.

They’ll get their chance to do so starting on Saturday and over the next few weeks.