In college golf, success means competing late into May, when the NCAA Championship (sans pandemic) typically plays out. But August brings its own indicator of a team’s success, even if it’s a statistic that often goes overlooked: How many guys did you send to the U.S. Amateur?
The number of players teeing it up from any one team is certainly an unofficial stat. In 2019, Pepperdine and Arizona State each had six active players in the field. This year, Texas Tech qualified a staggering eight players for the Aug. 10-16 at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Bandon, Oregon.
Texas Tech head coach Greg Sands and his players put that puzzle together from all parts of the globe on Wednesday afternoon. As they all combed the USGA’s newly released exemption categories for the nation’s top amateur event, the tally kept growing.
There is no official historical record, but Sands thinks four or five players in the U.S. Am field is “a standard number for a pretty good team.” In 2019, he had three players compete.
This year, of course, is a little different. Normally, a big chunk of the 312-man field is filled through 36-hole qualifiers, with only the top 50 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking securing a rankings-based exemption.
The field shrunk to 264 in 2020 and qualifying went away, two changes made out of necessity as the coronavirus continues to spread. It effectively top-loads the field, considering that after the top 50, many highly ranked – and very deserving – players often failed to get through one-day qualifying in past years.
In 2020, the top 225 players in the WAGR will gain entry.
“Four guys would have been my high mark,” Sands said of previous U.S. Am lineups. “Any time you’re qualifying, even the best players sometimes don’t make it. … I think that’s a pretty standard number for a really good team, when you’re getting four or five in.”
Texas Tech junior Sandy Scott, a native of Nairn, Scotland, is the highest Red Raider in the WAGR at No. 9. He also would have qualified, however, as a member of the 2019 Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup team.
Teammates Ludvig Aberg (No. 37), Andy Lopez (No. 139), Markus Braadlie (No. 145) incoming freshman Bard Bjornevik Skogen (No. 163), and Carl Didrik Mee Fosaas, who is ranked No. 213 and will join the roster in the fall as a transfer from Keiser University, all qualified courtesy of their spot in the rankings.
Jansen Smith earned a spot as a match-play qualifier at the 2019 U.S. Amateur – all 64 players from that bracket who remain amateur were granted an exemption. Players who advanced to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Junior received a similar exemption, which is how Garrett Martin gained entry.
Travel bans potentially could prevent some international players from being able to travel to the U.S. to play the U.S. Am, opening up more spots down the rankings. Sands is hoping for the best on that front.
Sands caddied for Martin in his U.S. Junior run a year ago and pending USGA and NCAA guidelines for both coaches and caddies, he’d do it again for Martin at Bandon Dunes – not just because it was a good partnership, but also because Sands finds him “bored to tears” without golf and recruiting going on this time of year.
It was a slow burn for the coach after the season was canceled. He felt the void after his players left, particularly the next month when the team should have been traveling to the Aggie Invitational. He felt it again during conference championship week (Texas Tech had won Big 12 Match Play in the fall), NCAA Regionals week and when the NCAA Championship should have been going on at the end of May. He tried to keep his emotions in check to keep his players’ spirits up.
“I really went into more of a mentor role, if you will of how to handle things in life and life doesn’t owe you anything and certainly the game of golf doesn’t owe you anything,” he said. “A hard lesson to learn, right? … I was trying to hold things together. I don’t think for me, until everybody went home, did I hit a lull. My wife would be like, ‘You OK over there?’”
Because that’s the other part of qualifying eight players for the U.S. Am: It signals that years of work has culminated with an exceptionally competitive team. The Red Raiders won their first three times out in the fall and were No. 5 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings when the season ended abruptly. Years of work goes into any given roster.
There’s new blood coming into Lubbock, and Sands says that while Scott, the team’s leading scorer, is still figuring out his plans for the upcoming season, “it all points toward him coming back.”
“Fortunately, I think we have most of the pieces back and we’re hopeful to get Sandy back as well,” he said. “Maybe that will be part of a good story.”
And now, they’ll always have Bandon.
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