In the latest Any Given Tuesday podcast, Stanford coach Conrad Ray talks about the start of the season and Lance Ringler explains rankings.
More than a year and half has passed since the 2019 NCAA Championship, and Stanford remains the defending champion.
The Cardinal are back in action this week for the first time in 349 days. Ahead of the Prestige at Coral Mountain Golf Club in La Quinta, California, head coach Conrad Ray joined the Any Given Tuesday podcast.
For anyone struggling to understand where the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings stand as some teams, like Stanford, just begin to dip their toe into this 2020-21 season while others have played a handful of events, Golfweek’s Lance Ringler explains the importance of connection among teams and conferences.
In honor of the spring college golf season getting underway, Lance Ringler joined the Any Given Tuesday podcast to discuss big performances.
The spring college golf season opened last month, and for some teams, that means the first team competition since COVID shut down college golf in March 2020.
In honor of the spring looking more normal after a fall season during which only a percentage of teams and conferences competed, Lance Ringler joined Charleston Southern head men’s coach Jason Payne and High Point head men’s coach Brady Gregor on their “Any Given Tuesday” podcast to discuss big winners and notable performances. Coastal Carolina head men’s coach Jim Garren also appeared on the episode to discuss his team’s first win of the season at the inaugural Any Given Tuesday Collegiate.
With an experienced fifth-year senior back in the lineup, Coastal Carolina won its first event of a very different season.
With the start of the spring college season, States Fort shelved a short stint as a cigar broker to get back to college golf. This COVID season has forced tough decisions and unusual circumstances, to say the least.
For the past six months, Fort, who has already earned bachelor’s degrees in accounting and marketing from Coastal Carolina, worked a remote job for Big Country Cigar Brokers. It was a low-key commitment with the small company he could maintain while also getting on the golf course and taking his fitness to the next level, which ultimately took his golf to the next level.
When college golf was shut down mid-March, Fort figured that was it. He interviewed a few days later for a job as a traveling cigar salesman, but then spoke with head coach Jim Garren about the possibility of a fifth year.
“I said absolutely, unequivocally, yes,” Fort said. He declined the full-time job offer.
The only problem? Coastal Carolina had no tournaments on the schedule in August when the enrollment deadline passed, so ultimately Fort sat out the fall semester. He’s back this spring working on his MBA and competing with the team.
“I missed the guys,” Fort said of sitting out the fall. “It hurt so bad getting to watch them play well in the fall and not being there.”
With Fort back in the fold for Coastal Carolina’s spring debut at the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate, the Chanticleers have their first victory of the season – also their first team title since March 2019. Coastal Carolina, at 37 under as a team, won by 13 shots. Fort closed with bogey-free 65 at Oak Point Golf Club in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, and won the individual title by four shots.
The win was a product of patience on a course where placement was key. Keep the ball in the fairway, and Oak Point is gettable.
“We didn’t change out gameplan,” Garren said. “We did the same thing all week. We didn’t worry about the other teams that were just busting driver every single hole. Our guys just did the same thing every single day on every single hole. When you get to the third day in a row of having the same shot, you pretty much know what you need to do with it and they were just full comfort zone by today.”
While his team competed last fall, Fort worked, but he also got serious in the gym. Together with a few friends from church, he picked up a gym membership and started getting stronger.
Ultimately, Fort gained 15 pounds and picked up about 4 mph of clubhead speed, which translates to about 10 extra yards.
At the Any Given Tuesday event, each team was broken into two groups of three players as a COVID precaution. Everybody on Coastal Carolina’s roster had experienced that in the fall, except Fort. Every other player had also experienced the start-stop nature of this season. Coastal Carolina originally would have played a North Carolina-Greensboro-hosted event in Puerto Rico this week, but when that moved to South Florida then fell off the schedule, Garren added this one.
“We’ve played four tournaments this season, none of them were on the schedule in mid-August,” Garren said. “…We’ve gone through this four times now so we’re ready for anything that can come up, I guess, at this point.”
Everything is a bankable experience, in Garren’s mind, and the Chanticleers’ last two tournament starts have offered vastly different lessons. In October, Coastal Carolina ended its fall at the very bottom of the 12-team Maridoe Collegiate.
“We got our brains beat in,” Garren admitted. “The course beat us up.”
States Fort and Jim Garren
It made for low spirits at the end of the event, but Garren saw no downside to competing at one of the most notoriously difficult venues in amateur and college golf. Coastal Carolina had played there in 2018 and afterward, Garren thought the difference in his guys was noticeable. Maridoe exposes every weakness in a player’s game.
“I think it just makes you better,” he said. “Our guys worked so hard late fall after the season ended and over the winter. They’ve looked as good as they’ve ever looked since I’ve been here, and I think playing that type of event has a lot to do with that.”
In a typical year, Costal Carolina will compete in five different time zones. Winning is important, but Garren wants to see how his men stack up against better teams, too. The spring schedule looks a lot more regional than usual this year, and it started with a lighthearted week in Kiawah Island. Teams stayed in houses rather than hotels and Coastal Carolina had a veteran back in the fold in Fort.
Garren wonders if across the country, the quality of play has risen with more schools going to hybrid-model classes and players having more time to play. There’s this, too: College golf can go away in an instant – and come back just as quickly.
Many players may find some extra gratitude in knowing that. Fort, for one, leaves Kiawah Island validated.
“Seeing the team win today, it made it all worth it.”
It’s fitting that one of the first spring college events on the east coast, the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate, pays homage to van drivers.
The team van is more symbolic than ever in college golf as the majority of teams and conferences resume play this spring after as many as 10 months off amid a lingering global pandemic. Many teams will play a regional schedule, Kennesaw State among them.
It’s fitting that one of the first spring college events on the East Coast, the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate, pays homage to that – Sprinter van tee markers and all. Kennesaw State head coach Bryant Odom said the roughly 350 miles from Kennesaw, Georgia, to this week’s tournament in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, may be the longest trip of the season.
After a 13-under team effort in Sunday’s opening round, it was a drive well worth it. No other team is within seven shots.
So far, a parking ticket has been Kennesaw State’s only setback.
In college golf, a Sprinter van may be iconic, but in Kiawah Island, it’s viewed more as an eyesore. In a laughable bit of irony, Odom got a call from security late the night of his team’s arrival, that such a van wasn’t permitted on the property where the team was staying. It was too late to move it and take a shuttle ride back, so Odom took his chances.
“I came out the next morning and the ticket was sitting there,” he said laughing.
It’s a minor obstacle amid the bigger picture.
“We’re just grateful to be out here on the road and play college golf. Anything from here is just the cherry on top, really.”
Starting on the tougher back nine at Oak Point Golf Club, Kennesaw State offset most of their birdies with bogeys. Fifth-year senior Connor Coffee punctuated the opening half of his round with a triple-bogey 7.
Odom met him in the fairway of the par-5 first, where Coffee hit his second shot to 10 feet, and gave him a rallying speech – that there was a lot of golf ahead.
“He just went off,” Odom said. “That’s the kind of player he is, he can just catch fire in a bottle like that.”
Coffee made the putt for eagle at the first, birdied Nos. 2 and 3 then eagled the par-5 fourth, too. He eagled the par-5 eighth and birdied the ninth for a 9-under 27 after turning in 40.
Not everything is back to normal, though, and the 10 six-man teams in the event played in two groups of three teammates at Oak Point. Everyone on the Kennesaw State roster could rally around what Coffee was doing. The Owls’ four counters played the front nine in 14 under.
“Easiest day of coaching I’ve had,” Odom remarked. “I didn’t have to do much.”
Coffee, a native of Peachtree City, Georgia, is tied with Coastal Carolina’s Zack Taylor at the top of the individual leaderboard.
Connor Coffee’s first-round scorecard at the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate. (Photo submitted)
Remarkably, 320 days have passed since Kennesaw State’s last competitive round as a team. Most classes were online at Kennesaw State this fall, but the team still gathered 20 hours a week.
“Our goal all fall was to stay sharp and have fun without getting burned out,” he said. “…It was a long fall but we made the best of it, I guess. We just tried not to get burned out. If the guys wanted to focus on school, let them focus on school. If they wanted to do more golf practice and drills and grind, they could do that. There was never any pressure either way.”
It’s a sign of a successful fall that the thought of rust never once crossed Odom’s mind watching his team compete on Sunday.
“They were making great decisions, they were staying aggressive, it was like everything was forgotten,” he said.
COVID precautions brings widespread schedule jockeying into play for many teams, Kennesaw State included. The Owls will play seven regular-season events this spring, and five of those events will be at new venues, this week included. Four of them are new on the college golf schedule, period.
All things being normal, Kennesaw State would have played a University of Greensboro-hosted event in Puerto Rico this month. The Auburn-hosted Tiger Invitational also went off the schedule when the SEC announced it would give priority to in-conference competition.
But Odom gained the Sea Palms Invitational at St. Simons Island, Georgia. The Atlantic Sun Conference championship will be at a new venue, the University of Georgia Golf Course in Athens, Georgia, too.
“I really like the way it played out with the events we have on our schedule now,” Odom said.
