May 31, 2004
When Texas A&M finished 10th at the Big 12 Men's Golf Championships in late April, it appeared to many that the Aggies' season was all but finished.
But fortunately for the Aggies, they still had the NCAA Central Regional remaining. A&M took full advantage of the opportunity, finishing fourth and advancing to the national tournament for the first time since 1997.
The Aggies will compete in the NCAA Men's Golf Championships here Tuesday through Friday at The Homestead Resort's Cascades Golf Course. The No. 38-ranked Aggies are the No. 11 seed.
"I would not go so far as to say it had been a disappointing year prior to regionals," A&M coach J.T. Higgins said. "We have had six top-five finishes and beaten some very good teams that we could not have even competed with a couple of years ago. But we had not played to our potential, not even close. I can tell you that if we had not qualified for nationals, we all would have felt like the season was unsuccessful."
The championship will consist of 18 holes each day for a total of 72 holes. The field will be cut to the low 15 teams and low six individuals not on those teams after Thursday's third round. The top four individual scores from each team will count toward each day's team score.
A&M will begin play at 1:03 p.m. (EST) on Tuesday and at 8:03 a.m. (EST) on Wednesday and will be paired with Georgia Tech and Arizona State both days. Tee times and pairings for the final two rounds will be based on team standings.
In addition to A&M, the 30-team field (with seeding in parentheses) includes No. 1-ranked Florida (13), No. 2 Clemson (1), No. 3 Georgia (7), No. 4 Arizona State (12), No. 5 UCLA (3), No. 6 Georgia Tech (10), No. 7 Oklahoma State (5), No. 8 Arizona (9), No. 9 Texas (17), No. 10 TCU (14), No. 11 Southern California (18), No. 13 Oklahoma (8), No. 15 New Mexico (6), No. 17 Kentucky (2), No. 20 California (24), No. 22 Brigham Young (15), No. 23 Washington (30), No. 26 Pepperdine (27), No. 28 North Carolina (28), No. 31 Georgia State (19), No. 32 SMU (26), No. 35 Toledo (21), No. 42 Auburn (16), No. 44 Wichita State (23), No. 45 Kent State (29), No. 49 Purdue (20), No. 50 Vanderbilt (25), Penn State(4) and Rhode Island (22).
Consistently ranked among Golf Digest's and Golf Magazine's top fifty courses in the United States, the Cascades Golf Course is touted as the finest mountain course in America. Opened in 1923, it has played host to many national tournaments. The late golf legend Sam Snead, a native of Hot Springs, helped build the course, was its first professional and still owns the course record with a 61. The Par-70 course measures 6,679 yards.
"The Cascades Course is a shorter course with only two par fives," Higgins said. "It will still demand accuracy off the tee although we will be hitting a lot of irons instead of drivers. It is a mountain course with lots of elevation changes and very quick greens that feature a lot of slope. I am sure the rough will be thick and that it will play very hard."
A&M will be represented by seniors Stephen Reed and David Tasker, junior David Schultz and sophomores Andrew Parr and Rand Arbuckle.
The Aggies have posted a 114-70-3 dual record this season and have had six top-five finishes. A&M opened the fall with a fifth-place finish at the Tucker Invitational and followed with a second-place showing at the Mason Rudolph Collegiate. A&M closed the fall season with a tie for fifth at the Barona Collegiate Cup, which included a second-round score of 13-under-par 275, the best round in school history.
The Aggies opened the spring with a solid performance at the Burns Intercollegiate in Hawaii, tying for sixth. A&M's 36-hole score of 563 is the fourth-best in school annals and the 54-hole score of 849 ranks fourth on the school chart. The Aggies struggled after that, tying for 13th at the Morris Williams Intercollegiate and finishing 10th at the Hall of Fame Invitational.
A&M came back to place seventh at the Border Olympics and ended the regular season with a fifth-place effort at the Hitchcock Invitational in early April. The Aggies then had their disappointing effort at the Big 12 Championships before rallying at the NCAA Central Regional to earn a berth a nationals.
"After the Big 12 Championship, we were able to turn it around at regionals for two reasons -- one physical and the other mental," Higgins said. "The first is that the course at regionals was extremely long and played to our strengths as a team. We are a long hitting team off the tee and that course places a premium on tee shots which really helped us.
"The other factor is a little harder to explain as it has to do with expectations and how we dealt with our poor play at conference," he added. "At the conference tournament, we had our sights set on winning both as a team and a few of the players wanted to be medalist. But after one round, it was evident that neither of those things were going to happen. So if your only goal is to win and you know that is not going to happen, then it is tough to worry about whether you come in fifth, sixth, seventh or even 10th place. At regionals, our goal was to advance and we knew that 10th place was every bit as important as second place so our focus was more on fighting for every shot and advancing. In the future, we need to play all our tournaments that way."
Tasker has had an outstanding season, leading the team with a 73.29 stroke average, the best by an Aggie since All-American Anthony Rodriguez in 1994-95 (72.1). Last week, he was named to the PING All-Region Team for the second straight year. Tasker has posted seven top-20 and four top-10 finishes and has placed in the top 15 in five spring tournaments.
Reed has missed just one tournament in his A&M career and the NCAA Championships will mark his 50th and final college tournament. He has posted four top-20 finishes and won the individual title at the Mason Rudolph Collegiate in the fall, closing with a six-under-par 65, the fifth-best round in school history. After a tough spring, he rallied to tie for eighth at regionals.
Parr ranks second on the team in scoring with a 73.51 average, the best by a sophomore in school history. One of the longest hitters in college golf, he's had five top-15 finishes this season, including a tie for fourth at the Tucker Intercollegiate to open the fall slate. He opened regional play with a three-under-par 69 and went on to finish sixth.
Schultz is familiar with The Cascades Course -- he tied for 18th there at the 2003 Southern Amateur, posting an even-par total of 74-73-67-70=284 and finishing six strokes out of first. A transfer from New Mexico, Schultz led the Aggies at the Big 12 Championships with a tie for 16th place, his fifth top-25 finish of the year.
Arbuckle was a mainstay in the lineup as a freshman, then redshirted last year to work on his swing. He qualified for just once in the Aggies first nine tournaments, but nationals will mark his fifth straight appearance in the lineup.
A&M is competing in its 21st NCAA Men's Golf Championships. The school's first appearance came in 1955, while the last was in 1997. The Aggies have posted 11 top-15 finishes and six top 10s in NCAA play with their best finish being fourth in 1982 in Pinehurst, N.C.
The top individual finish by an Aggie was also in 1982, when Danny Briggs finished eighth. Steve Veriato, competing as an individual, placed 10th in 1971, while Marcellino Moreno advanced to the final four in 1957 when the tournament had a match-play format. Moreno lost to eventual national champion Rex Baxter of Houston.
"Making it to the NCAA finals is a huge step for this program," Higgins said. "It means we are ready to compete with the very best teams in the country and that there is a little method to our madness. I think we have it going in the right direction and it is only going to get better and better."