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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The course was the opening round victor as all 30 teams finished the first round of the 2008 NCAA Men's Golf Championships over par on Wednesday.

First round play of the 72-hole tournament began Wednesday at Purdue's Kampen Course in West Lafayette, Ind. Thirty teams are gathered here in the field. After 54 holes on Friday, the field will be cut to the top 15 teams who will play for the national championship on Saturday.

Southern California and UCLA share the first-round lead, both coming in at 9-over par, 297. The University of Alabama is among a five-way tie at 12th place, shooting 21-over par, 309. Behind the co-leaders are, in order, Oklahoma State (298), Clemson and Kent State (301), Illinois and Florida (302), Georgia (303), Washington (305), Auburn and Charlotte (306), Stanford, Texas A&M, Middle Tennessee and Alabama (309), San Diego State (310), Arizona Sate, Louisville, Texas and UAB (311), Virginia (312), Indiana and East Tennessee State (313), Wake Forest (314), Penn State and Oregon (315), UC-Irvine (320), Mississippi State and Augusta State (326) and St. Mary's (333) at 45-over par.

Standing atop the player leaderboard is UCLA's Kevin Chappell. He is at 3-under par, shooting 69 to take a one-shot lead over Kent State's David Markle and Southern California's Tim Sluiter who both shot 70.

Alabama opened the first round in the afternoon on the No. 10 tee, playing the back nine first after a 30-minute delay as play was backed up. It was 5:00 p.m. when Michael Thompson, Alabama's last golfer on the tee, made the turn. It was nearly 8 p.m. when Thompson finished the round as the last Tide player in. Alabama made the turn at 16-over par as a team on the par 72 course at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex.

"We had a horrible back nine," said Alabama head Coach Jay Seawell of Alabama play to start the afternoon. "It's a tough golf course but it's four days, and I think everybody is going to have a round like we did today. We need to come back and play better tomorrow, that's for sure."

Seawell said his No. 1 ranked Crimson Tide team was prepared. "Everything looked good. We just putted poorly. To be honest with you, there's a lot of rough. We've talked about how hard this golf course is, but we just didn't use our putters very well today. We better learn to make some putts if we want to catch these guys because there are some guys playing pretty good. Anything under 300 is a good score here. We're going to have to break 300 a couple of times to get back in this tournament."

Alabama's five golfers here, all five of whom were named to the PING Division I All-Southeast Region team, combined for a 21-over par 309 score. Montgomery's Matthew Swan had Alabama's best round and goes into the second round in a T-23rd. He shot 3-over par, 75. His round included birdies on No. 8 and No. 15, bogeys on Nos. 3, 11 and 18, a double bogey on No. 7 which is a par 4 and 12 pars.

"It's playing real tough. Unfortunately it's probably about as easy as the course is going to play," said Swan who averaged 73.07 going into the tournament. "With the weather we got lucky. The temperature was real good and there wasn't that much wind but it's hard. It's so long. The rough is so high that if you do miss the fairway you're just chipping out because you're having to hit with a long iron and you can't hit a long iron out of this rough. It's real penal if you miss the ball off the tee at all. And some of the pin placements were pretty hard for a first round, so I was kind of surprised about that. But it's playing hard."

Thompson, the Southeastern Conference low stroke leader and 2008 Golfer of the Year, shot 4-over par, 76. His first nine holes found him turning at 3-over with six pars and three bogeys. His final nine holes were a mix with four birdies, one par, three bogeys and a double bogey on No. 5, a par three. He's among a T-40th.

"We got off to a bad start," said Thompson, a senior from Tucson, Ariz. "First off when you do that it's hard to build momentum. Personally, I was hitting the ball very, very well, a lot better than how I was playing in the practice rounds, which made me very happy. But even if you're hitting the ball really well, you still have to make putts and you have to hit really good golf shots. And I got unlucky a few times, just couldn't get anything really going and when I did I always backed it up with a bogey. I just made some back choices today."

Two Alabama golfers shot 79. Joseph Sykora and Mark Harrell are both 7-over par which places them T-87th. Matt Hughes shot 18-over par, 90. It was only the second time in 25 rounds this season that Alabama has not counted Hughes' round toward the team score.

After playing the afternoon round on Wednesday, Alabama starts out on the No. 1 tee in the morning round on Thursday. Hughes opens the round for the Tide at 6: 47 a.m. CT followed in 10 minute intervals by, in order, Sykora, Harrell, Swan and Thompson.

Fans can keep up with live scoring of the tournament by logging on to www.golfstat.com.