By Rob Wakeling
Associate Head Coach
We just got back from a trip to Orange County National in Orlando for our alumni trip.
The entire team went down. We took the entire team, the coaching staff, five alums and some boosters. The weather was great, right around 80 degrees every day, and that gave us a chance to get a lot of great practice in.
A lot of the boosters and alums said this was the best trip yet, and this is a trip we have been doing for seven years.
Our players competed in a 72-hole qualifier for our first tournament next week at the Davidson College Invitational in North Carolina. And then for some extra holes, we mixed it up a little bit. The kids love playing with the alumni and the boosters, so it is a fun four days.
The three seniors were exempt from qualifying for the first tournament, so that left two spots available. Sophomore Kody Fry played very well, shooting a pair of 70’s on the first two days. And our transfer, sophomore Sebastian Bendsen, battled back strong after struggling the first day when he may have been a little nervous. He shot 74 and 72 in the last two rounds on a pretty good golf course. We played the Crooked Cat course for the qualifier, and played it from 7,400 yards. That’s where they had the finals of Q School.
It was really good to see Sebastian and Kody step up and win those spots.
All four days were great for practice. We got to play in some wind, and playing long golf courses like that when your guys is very encouraging.
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| Orange County National and the Crooked Cat Course |
Corey Conners played great. He won the qualifier by shooting 7-under for four days. Taylor Pendrith shot 5-under. They played off to see who would play No. 1 next week, so there was a little something on the line and they were grinding pretty hard.
Since we were in Orlando, we had a lot of our former players who are down there playing golf just show up. Jon Mills showed up. Bryan DeCorso showed up. David Markle showed up. Brett Cairns showed up. And Kirby Dreher, who played on our women’s team, showed up.
This weekend we will head to Davidson, N.C.
One of our alums is getting us on Trump National in Charlotte, which will be a nice treat and a good warm-up for our guys. Then we compete on the River Run golf course just north of Charlotte. That’s where they played the Web.com Tour Championship, so our guys have seen the course on television. It looks very, very good and really hard, which is good for us.
The weather looks like it will be cool in the Charlotte area. They are saying it will be in the high 40’s and low 50’s. We’ll have a couple of days to practice, then we’ll get the guys right into it. We play 36 holes on Monday, then 18 on Tuesday. Two days later we turn around and head to the TPC of Myrtle Beach for the General Hackler Championship. So, we will be going pretty hard right at the start of the season.
There are good fields in both tournaments. I know Tennessee will be at Davidson. Then we’ll see Coastal Carolina and we’ll get exposed to some ACC schools that we don’t usually see in Myrtle Beach. Wake Forest and N.C. State are usually there.
Then we are home for eight days before going to the Floridian Golf Club for a who’s who of college golf at Palm City, Fla.
In the next four weeks, before we start our Texas A&M-Purdue-Ohio State swing, we should have an idea of the direction our spring is going to go. Right now we are No. 23 in the nation in Golfweek and No. 26 in Golfstat.
