After an opening round 7-over-par 295 at the U.S. Collegiate Sunday, leaving them in 10th place, Georgia men’s golf coach Chris Haack needed few words to describe his No. 1 ranked Dogs performance.

“Not very good,” said a clearly frustrated Haack. “We had a lot of mental mistakes and just things they can’t do if we’re going to win a championship.”

Those mental mistakes were evident in Adam Mitchell and Russell Henley’s rounds, who were playing solidly before triple-bogey 8s derailed their rounds, leading to a 74 and 77 respectively.

“He just hit a bad tee shot and kind of compounded the tee shot by trying to knock it out and it hit a limb and didn’t get it out,” Haack said. “It’s just one mistake that led to the next and that’s kind of what I was talking about, just taking your medicine sometimes and avoiding those big numbers. Same thing with Henley on one hole, just one thing compounded by another and it gets them in trouble.”

For Mitchell, his scorecard went from 2-under-par to 1-over in a flash.

“It’s just kind of one bad swing and a bad decision and a little unlucky break and you have a triple. It happens quick,” Mitchell said.

Mental toughness will be especially important with terrible weather expected for the second round today.

“Tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be really bad, so we have to be mentally tough to deal with it,” Haack said.

Despite their opening-round struggles, Mitchell feels the Dogs have a solid chance to make up a lot of strokes tomorrow.

“We don’t need to go out and try to make birdies. It’s going to be horrible weather, and we’re not close to out of it. We’re right in it, we’re just behind, and we can make those shots up in no time,” said Mitchell.

Sophomore Harris English and junior Hudson Swafford led the Dogs individually with solid 1-over-par 73s in a tie for 23rd individually.

With everyone having an off day, the Dogs should fare better if they can avoid the high numbers and putt better today.

“We’ve got 36 holes left, and there is still a lot of golf. So we just have to play better and get ourselves back into the hunt,” Haack said. “We can do it. We’ve just got to take care of things better and not make the mental mistakes.”