That it’s Kennesaw State — not your usual PGA Tour feeder school like Georgia or Georgia Tech — as the only state school in the NCAA men’s golf championships may be good for a raised eyebrow or two at a clubhouse near you.
At KSU, the reaction follows more the satisfied-smile model.
“It’s bragging rights, of course. I think it shows we’re right up there with them,” Bryant Odom, the Owls’ second-year coach, said before departure.
As a former Bulldog himself — part of a couple of SEC championships at the start of the 2000s — Odom knows the landscape. Just as he knows Georgia’s long-standing golf coach Chris Haack on a level that giving him the occasional, well-placed needle is not out of the question.
The Bulldogs and Yellow Jackets sank in their qualifying regionals — needing to finish fifth or better to advance, Georgia was 10th, Georgia Tech sixth. A golf-strong state sent three other schools to regionals, but Georgia State, Georgia Southern and Augusta University all landed a little short of the green.
And there were the Owls, who came in a strong second, tying top-ranked Vanderbilt, through the three-round regional in Tennessee. Playing in the same tournament with Georgia, they came in a combined 22 strokes lower than the Dogs.
Gaining far more than personal satisfaction from that week, Kennesaw State is one of 30 teams opening play Friday in the NCAA Championships at Rich Harvest Farms in Illinois. After 54 holes of stroke play, the field will be cut in half. There will follow 18 more holes of stroke play Monday to determine the top eight teams advancing to match play.
The Owls have been here twice before, and finished 26th in both the 2011 and ’14 NCAAs. They are beginning to feel like they belong.
“Now we feel like we can play with (the top teams),” said Christopher Guglielmo, a senior from Cumming. “We have the game to keep up with them and beat them.”
“At the regionals, we were hanging with Vanderbilt, arguably one of the hottest teams in the country,” Odom said. “The guys a year ago, they’d get paired with teams like Vanderbilt and Georgia and there was a little bit of a shell shock. Not now.”
It was a winding journey that brought Odom, 38, to KSU in 2015. Playing the lesser pro circuits. Various disappointments at PGA Tour Q School. A club-pro gig. Returning to Georgia as a grad assistant coach. Assistant coach, Wisconsin. Two years as head coach at Western Carolina.
Sooner or later, you have to get real. “I didn’t want to be the married guy out there (on the mini-tour treadmill) trying to break even,” he said. “I can break even at home. I never had any regrets, and that experience has brought me to where I am.”
He brought with him to Kennesaw State some techniques that are suited to those college athletes who wear far more padding than golfers. The book on his desk that he most often refers to these days is not by Jones or Penick or Nicklaus. It is “You Win in the Locker Room First,” by former Falcons coach Mike Smith and motivational speaker Jon Gordon.
He’ll talk enough about staying true to the process and working on incremental improvement that he could start on Dan Quinn’s staff tomorrow.
“It started last spring,” he said, “it clicked with guys. We started doing everything day-to-day. We had big goals, but we broke them down to where each day we had a goal.”
In case any of his guys might forget a particularly helpful bromide, he included one on every bag tag handed out to the team this season. On Guglielmo’s, for instance, read the words “Pedal Down,” to remind him to finish strong. Shooting 6 under at the regional, just two strokes behind the individual lead, qualified as a strong finish.
The Owls got contributions from across the age spectrum this season. A senior (Guglielmo) led the team in rounds at par or better, rounds in the 60s and top-five finishes. A sophomore (Jake Fendt, Suwanee) had the team’s low scoring average, 72.15. A freshman (Connor Coffee, Peachtree City) even won a tournament, the Steelwood Intercollegiate in Loxley, Ala., at 12 under.
“You look at our lineup, we’re really consistent. The top five guys are all within 72 and 73 stroke average,” Odom said. “Stuff like that tells me we’re better than our actual ranking because we can shoot these scores wherever we play.”
Seeded 25th among the 30 teams, Kennesaw State is nobody’s favorite this week. But it is leaning on some wise words from, of all sources, Georgia’s Haack.
“He gave us some good advice the other day — you guys go up there and here’s your thought: Why not us?” Odom said. Every text Odom has sent his players since has ended with those same three words.
“So, yeah, why not us?” he restated.
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