In finale with UGA golf, Chris Haack gets one more chance at another NCAA ring

The Georgia golf team will enter this week’s NCAA men’s championship as a long shot to win their third national title. But at least the Bulldogs will have a chance to send outgoing coach Chris Haack out in style — even if it was dicey for a while.

Georgia hosted the NCAA Regional qualifier last week at the UGA Golf Course in Athens, but wasn’t ensured of snagging the fifth and final spot for the NCAA finals until a Coastal Carolina player missed a birdie putt on the final hole.

That’s when Haack could finally exhale. The Bulldogs coach is completing his 30th and final season, and wanted one last trip to the NCAAs championships.

“You know how hard it is to get (to) the championships and when I saw what was happening to Bruce (Heppler, Georgia Tech coach), I thought that’s kind of sad that he wasn’t going to have a last chance at it because that’s what we ultimately set out to do each year. And I did not want it to end in Athens, that’s for sure,” Haack said.

Heppler, like Haack a member of the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, had also announced his retirement at the end of the year. But the Yellow Jackets failed to qualify at the Winston-Salem Regional and will not be going to the NCAAs.

The NCAA golf championships will start Friday at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, California, with 30 teams and six individual qualifiers in the field. Each team plays three rounds, with the top 15 qualifying for a fourth round. After 72 holes the top eight teams advance to a match-play format. Oklahoma State is the defending national champion and Auburn is ranked No. 1. Georgia is ranked 23rd.

A big finish for the Bulldogs would be icing on the cake for Haack. He led the Bulldogs to the 1999 national championship in his third season as head coach, having recruited such stalwarts as PGA Tour winner Ryuji Imada and Nick Cassini, the No. 1-ranked amateur in the country. Georgia won it all again in 2005, a team led by future PGA Tour winners Kevin Kisner, Brendon Todd and Chris Kirk.

The Bulldogs had a chance in 2011, when their lineup featured future PGA Tour winners Russell Henley and Harris English, and British Am champion Bryden Macpherson. But Georgia lost 3-2 to Augusta State in the championship match.

This season has been a roller coaster. The Bulldogs won the Linger Longer Invitational at Reynolds Lake Oconee by 48 shots, but failed to qualify for match play at the SEC Championships at Sea Island.

“Some weeks you hit it like a Tour player and some weeks it’s like you don’t even know what end of the club to hit,” Haack said. “There’s just so many variables that are involved in it and you’ve just got to hope you catch your guys at the right time. I think we’re pretty battle tested and having to battle coming down the stretch to hold on, it’s certainly shown me that they’re capable of doing it in pressure situations.”

This year’s team has survived a couple of key injuries, ailments that are still lingering as the Bulldogs prepare for their trip to California.

Sungyeop Cho has been dealing with three bulging discs in his back and that problem flared up again last week on the eve of the NCAA Athens Regional. Matt Moloney has been rehabbing from a hip flexor and had to play through the pain to participate.

“This is the first time in all my years that we’ve really had to fight the injury bug,” Haack said. “We just really haven’t had a fully healthy squad, it seems like, for the whole year. That’s the biggest thing that’s surprised me.”

Georgia’s top player has been Carter Loflin, a senior from Atlanta’s St. Pius High School who leads the team in scoring average. Loflin tied for 14th at the regional, and has one victory and four top 10s this season.

The Bulldogs are also likely to start James Earle, Grayson Wood, JD Culbreth and Moloney, depending on Cho’s health.

“My team played really solid,” he said. “The highest score we had (at) the regional was a 74, so that tells me they’re all playing good, but there’s just so many good teams out there now. You’ve just got to be on, you know? I feel like we’ve got a team that can compete. We’ve just got to get it done.”