Pictured Above: Anton Frondelius reacts to final putt on 18th green
2017 NEC Championship Results
2017 NEC Championship Headquarters
Daytona Beach, FL – He's done it!
After offering many glimpses of his vast potential throughout a productive four-year Wagner career,
Anton Frondelius (Munkedal, Sweden / The Gunner) put it all together as a senior. The ultra-talented Swede, who combines a rare blend of power off the tee with deft precision on and around the green, fired a two-under par 70 today to finish at one-under par overall, and is the 2017 Northeast Conference Men's Golf Champion.
En route to earning All-NEC Second-Team honors as a junior a year ago, Frondelius helped lead the Seahawks to their first-ever NEC Team Championship and subsequent NCAA Championship appearance. This season, the battle-tested veteran is the conference's individual champion. Frondelius fired rounds of 71-74-70-215 at the Par-72, 6,816-yard LPGA – International Hills Course to claim the 54-hole title by two strokes over Bryant's Ryan Tombs and four shots over second-round leader, Brando Mihalo of Saint Francis U.
THE CHAMPION
Last month, Frondelius showed a harbinger of things to come when he claimed his first career individual title, besting a talented and deep 108-person field in
winning the 36-hole Lehigh Valley Invitational, doing so in dramatic fashion, outlasting Villanova's Lucas Trim and Eric Dietrich of nationally-ranked UConn in a three-way playoff.
As an individual conference champion, Frondelius has qualified for the
2017 NCAA Men's Golf Championship, which features four Regional sites and concludes at the Rich Harvest Farms Golf Club in Sugar Grove, IL.
"This has been in the making for four years," said enthused Wagner head men's golf coach
Christopher Fourman. "Anton has developed tremendously as a player and I am so proud for him to have won his final NEC Championship. He played within himself for three days and hit the necessary shots coming down the stretch in the heat of the moment.
"We are already looking forward to finding out his regional location and preparing for him to take the next step to get to the National Championship at Rich Harvest Farms," the 2016 NEC Men's Golf Coach of the Year added.
Frondelius' championship form helped Wagner improve from a tie for sixth position at the start of the day, to a fourth-place finish in the team competition. Bryant won the team title with a score of 884, and will now move on to the 2017 NCAA Championship. The Bulldog's +20 team performance outdistanced second-place Fairleigh Dickson's score of 910 by 26 shots.
Robert Morris shot 913 (+49) to finish third, with the surging Seahawks next in fourth at +57 (921). Central Connecticut was fifth (925, +61), LIU Brooklyn claimed sixth (936, +72). Sacred Heart and Saint Francis U finished in a tie for 7th with matching scores of 940, (+76), while St. Francis Brooklyn rounded out the field (985, +121).
Sophomore
Lucas Moreno (Bogota, Colombia / Gimnasio Campestre), the
reigning NEC Golfer of the Week and 2016 league Rookie of the Year, finished in a tie for 17th with scores of 79-76-76-231. Frondelius' country mate, sophomore
Oskar Sundberg (Danderyd, Sweden / Osterakers Gymnasium), improved his score each day with rounds of 82-78-74-234 which was a good for a tie for 22nd place.
Junior
Nicholas Musshafen (Fairport, NY / Fairport) also improved in each of the last two rounds, winding up in 33rd on rounds of 82-80-79-241. Freshman
Brendan Haselton (Sayville, NY / Sayville) picked up valuable experience with a 44th-place finish on rounds of 89-84-88-261, but did not factor in the Seahawk scoring.
