No. 2 Gulf Coast aims to be No. 1
PERKINSTON –There are three members of Mississippi Gulf Coast's squad returning for their second NJCAA Division II Men's Golf Tournament.
They finished third last year and think this year's team is better and deeper. They've carried one important lesson with them all year long.
"We were the best in Mississippi, and I think everybody though we were going to walk in and it was going to be easy like the whole season was," sophomore George Kawell said. "Once we got there, we realized it was a whole different ballgame."
Grant Motter and Phillip Hickam tied for second in the individual standings last year. They'll need more great play this year to help second-ranked Gulf Coast take the title away from South Mountain, the defending champion.
South Mountain, from Phoenix, Ariz., also returns three golfers who played in last year's tournament at Scottsboro, Ala., including medalist Connor Klein.
This year's tournament in Plymouth, Ind., near South Bend, will be played at Swan Lake Resort's Black Course. It's a par-72 layout that measures 7,112 yards.
"Coach told us it's a really nice course," freshman Jonathon Newman said. "He said it's kind of long and kind of favors the courses we play down there on the Coast."
Gulf Coast has won nine straight Region 23 titles and has finished third the past two seasons. Coach Tommy Snell thinks this team has a legitimate chance of winning the school's first golf national championship.
"We're as deep as we've ever been, and right now everybody is playing well," he said. "They're starting to kind of gel as a team. They're working hard. Even though I'm not with them right now because they're off at home, the beauty of golf is you don't have to have your team together to practice. "
He's stressed the importance of continuing to work out, something that will be important over the four-day tournament. It's the only 72-hole event on the team's schedule. When you add in practice rounds Sunday and Monday and time on the range early and late each days, it's six days of pretty non-stop golf.
That long grind can wear on you mentally and physically. Motter knows what can happen when there's even just a brief lapse, having stumbled to the clubhouse one day at Scottsboro last year.
"Don't double the last two holes on the third day," he said, laughing. "You just have to play, and whatever happens, happens."
Both of the Bulldogs' freshmen golfers have experience on the national stage. Colin Troxler finished 15th at the 2014 Big I National Championship, a junior tournament that boast past champions Tiger Woods and Justin Leonard. Newman played in the 2012 U.S. Kids Golf Teen World Championship.
"I learned a lot because those guys were top of the list," Troxler said. "A lot of them were going to top schools."
Snell has seen his team get better all season long. The Bulldogs won six tournaments this year, including the region tournament in an exciting sudden-death tiebreaker over Meridian, which will have four golfers at Swan Lake.
Gulf Coast never finished worse than second in any event it took an A-team to, including three featuring four-year schools. One of those second-place finishes was to Coastal Georgia, which is trying for its third straight NAIA title this week.
"Colin and Jonathon are better than they were at the beginning of the year," Snell said. "When you have Meridian and Co-Lin nipping at your heels the whole year long and you have to play well to beat them, you get better or you get run over."
All the practice and tournaments have been leading up to this final event. The entire team is aiming to finish at the top.
"I feel like we have a better chance to win it this year than last year," Hickam said. "We can really win the whole thing as a team. I just want to post four good scores for my team and bring home the national championship. That's all I care about."
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