AMES – Drive for show, putt for dough – one of golf’s oldest cliches and yet, so often, it’s right on the money.

For whatever reason – be it the saturated greens from the previous night’s heavy rains or the fact that the pressure was ramped up a notch – the putting strokes that had guided the Webster City boys’ golf team to a perfect regular season were absent from Friday’s Class 3A sectional tournament at Veenker Memorial Golf Course.

Makable birdie putts either came up short or slid right on by. Necessary par putts stayed on the lip. And frustrations reached an all-time high.

“It was my worst putting day of the year. It was terrible … embarrassing,” Avery Fuhs said after a round of 77 that placed him third on the 6,640-yard, par-72 track. “I had five-footers for birdie and couldn’t make them.”

The long day on the greens led to the first blip on the Lynx resume, but they did survive and advance to this Friday’s district meet in Waverly with a runner-up score of 315. Gilbert took home the sectional crown with a 313 behind a meet-medalist round of 74 from lefty leader Garret Jensen.

Joining WCHS and Gilbert at districts will be Decorah, Clear Lake and Oelwein. The first- and second-place finishers will move on to the state meet.

“This honestly should bring us back to reality,” Alec Fuhs, the sectional runner-up with a 75, said following Friday’s round. “We have to be a thousand times better (at districts).”

Navigating its way into the next round was obviously the No. 1 goal for WCHS, but finishing anywhere other than the top of the leaderboard was not in the pre-meet game plan.

“It bothers me. I don’t know if it bothers anyone else, but it bothers me,” Alec Fuhs said when asked about the second-place finish. “Yeah, it’s survive and advance, but it’s really frustrating to get our first loss.”

WCHS head coach Dave Brighton witnessed first-hand the putting woes throughout the day and they infected his entire lineup.

“Our biggest problem right now is our putting. We had way too many 3-putts,” Brighton said. “It wasn’t a happy day for us. We’re just disappointed that we didn’t play as well as we should have.”

Avery Fuhs’ woes with the flat stick began early. He threw a short iron approach to within 6 feet at the par-4 second hole, but blew his birdie putt by the hole. He exacerbated his problem by nonchalantly trying to tap it in and he missed that too.

And just like that a potential birdie was a bogey.

“It’s just common sense that you don’t do something like that,” Avery Fuhs said. “I know I need to work on my short game and focus a little more.”

Ironically, it was Avery Fuhs’ putter that nabbed him the third-place medal. On the fourth sudden-death playoff hole against Gilbert’s Ty Austin, the WCHS junior drained a 25-foot birdie putt to end it on the par-4 first.

Alec Fuhs opened his round with a birdie at the par-5 18th and added another at the par-5 10th. He had a chance to force his own playoff with Jensen on his final hole – the par-3 17th – after throwing a dart off the tee to within four feet. But the birdie putt missed on the low side.

“I started off hot, but then the putter left me,” Alec Fuhs said. “I felt like I hit my irons really well, but I just couldn’t make any putts.”

Logan Yates and Drew Fielder struggled on the greens as well, leading to rounds of 80 and 83 to finish off the Lynx scoring. Both collected two birdies, but had trouble making par.

Sean Vogelbacher (91) and John Ferrell (94) had their share of difficulties as well.

The Lynx made just six birdies as a team compared to 10 of the dreaded “others” – double-bogey or worse. That led to a lot of long faces in the team van as they prepared to exit the scene.

“There aren’t a lot of happy faces because we didn’t play well,” Brighton said. “We’ll need to play much better to make it to state.”

Friday’s district tournament will be held at the par-70 Waverly Municipal Golf Course. WCHS, Gilbert, Decorah and Clear Lake are all among the top-10 ranked teams in the class.

“There will be four teams there that can win,” Alec Fuhs said.

“We’ll have to play our best round of the season,” Avery Fuhs said.