May 4, 2009
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — The Vanderbilt men’s golf team will make its return to NCAA Championship play later this month at the regional championship hosted by Western Kentucky University at The Club at Olde Stone.
The three-day, 54-hole event is scheduled for May 14-16.
In a change from previous years, the NCAA Regionals were broken into six sites rather than the three. The same number of teams — 81 — have been broken into three groups of 14 and three groups of 13. Sites in Kentucky, Florida and New Jersey feature 14 teams and five unassociated individuals, with the Texas, California and Oklahoma sites taking 13 teams and 10 individuals.
Pac-10 champion Washington is the No. 1 seed in Bowling Green, followed by Atlantic Coast Conference champs Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, UCLA and Ole Miss. East Tennessee State, Duke, Big East champion Louisville, Ohio State and Vanderbilt round out the top 10 seeds. The field also includes automatic qualifiers MTSU (Sun Belt), Austin Peay (Ohio Valley), Cleveland State (Horizon) and Bucknell (Patriot).
Regional No. 1 seeds at the other five sites are Clemson, Stanford, Southern California, Georgia and Oklahoma State.
Vanderbilt last made the NCAA Championship field in 2007, Head Coach Tom Shaw’s first season in Nashville. That team placed fifth in the NCAA West Regional at Arizona State’s Karsten Golf Course to advance to the NCAA National Championship for the third time in school history.
Current senior Jon Curran finished tied for the second at the 2007 West Regional before scoring a Top 10 result at the NCAA National Championship in Williamsburg, Va.
The low five teams and one individual not on those teams will advance from each regional to the 2009 NCAA National Championship at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, May 26-30.
Thoughts from Coach Shaw
On The Club at Olde Stone….
“I only know the course from its reputation, but I expect it to be really difficult. This course should separate the real teams from the wanna-be’s, and we hope we’re not wanna-be’s.”
On the smaller fields for NCAA Regionals….
“This way is probably better, to not have so many teams at one site. You have the chance to space it out and certainly have a better pace. But only five teams advance, so you really have to come out ready to play from day one. You can’t afford to slip back and start losing sight of teams in front of you.”
Noting the field
Eleven of 12 Southeastern Conference squads earned a team berth in the NCAA Championships. Ole Miss and Vanderbilt are the SEC’s only representatives in Bowling Green, Ky.
Alabama and Tennessee will both compete at the Galloway (N.J.) National Golf Club, while Florida and Mississippi State were sent to the University of Texas Golf Club. Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky will all take to the Red Tail Golf Club in Sorrento, Fla., as Arkansas and LSU head to the Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla.
The lone SEC team left out of the field, Auburn will have two individuals — Glenn Northcutt and Cole Moreland — competing alongside Florida and Mississippi State in Austin, Texas.