SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Virginia will be one of two teams moving onto match play for the first time. Florida will join the Cavaliers in bracket play here at Grayhawk Golf Club, host of the 2023 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship.
The top eight teams after 72 holes of stroke play will now go head-to-head to decide the NCAA champion. Virginia is the No. 7 seed and will play No. 2 seed Florida in the opening round.
While Bowen Sargent’s squad is the lowest-ranked team of the eight teams at No. 17 in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings, the Cavaliers are hardly a Cinderella story. Underdog, certainly, but any talk about them ‘just happy to be here’ or ‘a surprise team’ at this point can be thrown out the window.
Virginia can win it all.
Sargent took Virginia to Rich Harvest Farms and played with Oklahoma. He watched the Sooners win it all as the 14th ranked team in college golf.
“I told our team we played with Oklahoma at Rich Harvest they were ranked where we are and they won and then the next year it was Oregon,” Sargent said. “I told them you can win this thing.”
There have been five teams with a double-digit ranking that have won this championship in the 13 years of the match play format:
- 2009: Texas A&M (14th)
- 2015: LSU (11th)
- 2016: Oregon (22nd)
- 2017: Oklahoma (14th)
- 2019: Stanford (12th)
Watching his team this week play well enough to get a Tuesday morning tee time is not a surprise.
“I am very humble,” Sargent said. “I told our assistant we would make match play. I have a lot of pride and am happy for the program. We haven’t been that good the last four or five years and Ben (James) and Bryan (Lee) kind of changed that.”
A big reason for Virginia’s rise this year is freshman Ben James. Right out of the gate he won two of his first three college events and is the top freshman in college golf and a Haskins Award finalist.
“Ben brought a lot to this program,” Sargent said. “The way he approaches it day to day, the way he works that spread throughout our team.”
“As much as a coach wants to talk about it and enforce it, when you have guy like him that does it day to day the other guys see it and notice it and really changed the culture of our team. He is the reason it has changed.
James keeps everything in perspective.
“Means a lot to hear that from coach,” James said. “Golf is just a game at the end of the day I try to be the best person I can be and bring a positive mindset and hard working mentality and be a good teammate.”
Having a player like James can take pressure off the others.
“It’s what so many end of practice competitions have been for and awesome to see in the end how we can make some clutch putts and finishing the job.”
James led Virginia this week with a 4-under total and a sixth-place finish individually.
Behind James’ victories, Virginia also won twice in the fall and then posted a third-place finish at the NCAA Las Vegas Regional to earn a spot this week in Scottsdale. According to Sargent, playing in Las Vegas may have played a big role in the Cavaliers success this week.
“Playing in Vegas helped us a lot. It is a similar look to this,” Sargent said. “Most of our team stayed out West and give our admin credit. They gave us the ability to stay out here and that helped a lot. We were able to get here five or six days before we got started here.
“We would hear you are not going believe how far you hit, not going to believe the pull towards phoenix, things like that and I think we learned that in the days leading up to here.”
Sargent also credits how much time they spend on course management and preparation.
“I think we did a lot of work on the front end. I talked to (North Florida coach) Scott Schroeder and (Liberty coach) Jeff Thomas. I had a lot of people help me with this place,” Sargent said.
“We work really, really hard on course management. Probably one of the few programs in the country that really, really. … we beat into our guys’ heads. How to use yardage books, think around the course like a professional.”
Whatever Sargent’s team has done leading up to the finals and whatever they are doing this week is working.