Month in Review: Texas A&M Golf teams finish regular season

After six months of competition, the end goal was in sight for the Texas A&M men’s and women’s golf teams. 

Just three regular season tournaments remained between them and the SEC Championships in April. The next month would bring a mixed bag for the Aggies, but the highs and lows that each team experienced have head coaches J.T. Higgins and Trelle McCombs excited for the beginning of postseason play.

After a two week layoff to end February and begin March, the Aggie men’s team finally got back on the course at the Bandon Dunes Championship in Bandon, Oregon. Perched alongside the scenic Oregon coastline, the “Old Macdonald Course” as it is called, presented quite a challenge for A&M, but strong performances from junior Cameron Champ and sophomore Chandler Phillips helped the Aggies continue their streak of top five finishes on the season with a team score of 5-over par.

“We got beat by a couple of teams that wouldn’t have beaten us on any other golf course that we play,” said Higgins. “I don’t think we played great, but our guys hit a lot of shots that we thought were good. All it takes is the ball trickling off the green a little bit and now you’re 20 or 30 yards away. It just didn’t work out.” 

“It’s a different style of golf, and maybe we didn’t adapt as well as we needed to, but it was still a great experience.”

Champ turned in a three-day total of 6-under par, good for a tie for fifth, and was the only Aggie to break par in every round. Phillips came in tied for ninth at 4-under, and west coast product Kavan Eubank turned in a top twenty five performance despite shooting a final round 77.

The old adage goes, “drive for show, putt for dough.” Higgins thought the team left more than a few shots on the course because of the flatsticks.

“We didn’t putt very well physically, but also it’s really like going to Scotland. If you watch the British Open on the Old Course (at Saint Andrews) there are huge greens. You can have some three putts since there’s a lot of movement on the greens. So if you’re not hitting the ball close you can have a hard time.”

A&M was back in action the following Sunday through Tuesday at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational in Palm City, Florida. The 54 hole tournament was a grind, with the Aggies finishing in sixth place at 15-over, but only 8 shots back of Wake Forest who won at 7-over. This marked the first time all season that the team had finished outside of the top five on the leaderboard.

“It’s one of our favorite tournaments,” Higgins said of the Valspar. “Usually it’s the best field we see in the spring. You can finish sixth in golf and everyone thinks you played terrible. We really didn’t finish that bad. We still didn’t feel like we played as well as we should have, but it wasn’t terrible golf. It was good, but if you want to win golf tournaments against those teams you have to play great.”

One of the bright spots of the tournament for A&M had to be junior Andrew Paysse who shot 2-over for the tournament and finished in a tie for twelfth, the highest of any Aggie.

“It’s fun to watch Andrew. He’s getting more and more confident. We’re trying to get him to realize that we think he’s better than he does. He’s a great putter and his ball-striking has come around a lot. It’s just every once in awhile he lets one get away from him. But for the most part he’s just solid. He’s been a pleasant surprise and I think he’s probably going to be in the lineup the rest of the way.”

Coming off of the hard fought tournament in Florida, the team returned to the friendly confines of Bryan-College Station and Traditions Club at their home tournament, the Aggie Invitational. Unfortunately, the weather played a bigger factor than anybody would have preferred and the event was called after just 36 holes with the Aggies in third place at 1-over par. 

Despite being twelve shots back of LSU, the team had momentum going into the final round. Champ was in a tie for second at 5-under, and Phillips was in the mix as well at even par. Despite the cancellation of the final round, Higgins was pleased with the team’s performance. 

“It was another solid outing,” he said. “We’d really like to win, that’s the only thing lacking from our resume this year. But they looked good and we’re playing really good golf.”

“That second round, Chandler shot 72, but he bogeyed 15, 16, and 17. So he was 3 under with four to go and he ended up shooting even. That was the same thing, trying to make things happen instead of letting them happen. And he’d be the first to tell you that he got frustrated and kind of lost his composure a bit. He probably gave a shot or two away that way too.”

The Aggies were able to replace the lost Sunday of golf with a 36 hole tournament in Baton Rouge the next week. They finished 4th at 26-over par in a field that included LSU, Arkansas, and Southeastern Louisiana. 

A&M heads to Sea Island, Georgia this Friday for the SEC Championship. Last year, the Aggies turned in their best finish since joining the conference. The team shot 16-over par and finished runner up to Georgia at 13-over. When asked about the possibility of getting their first win of the season at the tournament, Higgins said the overall depth of the conference would make it tough, but all the more rewarding and beneficial for the team as they look ahead to the upcoming postseason run.

“It’d be incredible. There are 11 SEC teams in the top-50 of the rankings and nine in the top-30. It’s just so deep and talented, but that’s what makes it such a great conference and great competition and we look forward to that.  It would be really cool for the guys to have that experience. And it would be a great place to start winning. Win one there and then win two in a row.”

Kane’ohe Kilpper Golf Club in Hawaii has been the location of some very fond memories for the Texas A&M women’s golf team. Over the years, the Aggies have consistently performed well on the course, bringing home multiple team and individual titles in the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational.

2017 was no different. The Aggies shot 5-under as a team, winning by 15 shots, their first victory of the season. Sophomore Maddie Szeryk was the individual medalist by 4 shots and Courtney Dow joined Szeryk in the top-10 with a 3-under par sixth place finish. 

Coach McCombs attributes the successful week to the team really being able to come together off the course.

“We had the opportunity to talk very candidly as a team (before the tournament),” she said. “It would probably best be described as walking in each other's shoes and understanding what the other person is walking through. We just had the opportunity to open up and realize some things and really take it back to the basics of family, team, and being together and being there for one another.” 

For Szeryk, who has relied on the strength of solid first round play throughout the season, the key to getting that first win of the year was keeping the same approach throughout the golf tournament.

“We actually talked about it the night before the last round,” said McCombs. “She’d finished second so many times and one of the things I told her was that she got in there and think that she had to make things happen instead of just allowing them to happen. So our gameplan was to not do anything differently. To be patient and not force things. She just kind of turned it on from that point forward.”

Next it was off to Sunset, South Carolina for the Clemson Invitational. The Aggies could not carry over the performance of the previous tournament into this event and had their lowest finish of the season, shooting 36 over par and finishing in 13th place. The top two finishers for the team were Szeryk and Bianca Fabrizio at 4-over, tied for 29th. 

McCombs says both the team and the coaching staff lost focus of the approach that they had had all season long. 

“The difference was preparation,” she said. “Bottom line. We brought them together after Clemson and we as a coaching staff took responsibility for our part of that. We didn’t do some of the things that we know worked. I don’t think it was purposeful, but sometimes things just kind of snowball. I don’t think we were prepared as well as we could have been.”

Needing a good bounce back performance in their last regular season tournament, A&M travelled back to the southeast for the Brickyard Collegiate in Macon, GA, McCombs’ hometown. In tough scoring conditions, the Aggies finished runner up to ninth ranked Furman at 19-over par. Szeryk and Thanya Pattamakijsakul tied for 6th at 2-over par, but the story of the tournament for the team had to be sophomore Chloe Velasco.

Making the start in place of the injured Courtney Dow, Velasco fell ill on the morning of the first round. Despite that, she managed to rally on the first day with a 76 and a 73, which included a hole-in-one on the par-3 14th hole.

“Chloe hadn’t really been in the lineup that much this whole year and she was as sick as a dog the entire time,” said McCombs. “Luckily we took a cart on Monday for 36 holes. She would get to the tee box and was in so much pain, but she had a hole-in-one. On that particular hole our volunteer assistant Cat had to actually tell her it was her turn to hit, and then she went up there and knocked it in the hole.”

She followed that up with a 77 in round three to finish the tournament 10-over in a tie for 24th, the highest finish of her career. 

“On Tuesday it was so bad that she didn’t hit balls or warm up. We literally had her in a room laying down 7 minutes before she teed off. Then she goes out and pipes it down the fairway. I said to fear the sick and wounded because those are the people who are going through the motions and don’t let their head get in the way.”

“I didn’t even ask her if she wanted to withdraw because I already knew the answer to that question. She did great.”

Moving forward, the Aggies will tee off on Friday in Hoover for the SEC Championship. They followed a victory in 2015 with a fourth place finish last season. As on the men’s side, the SEC is stacked this year with 6 teams in the top 25 including top ranked Alabama. Despite the tough competition, McCombs thinks her team is up to the challenge. 

“We know the course which is great,” she said. “We’ve played it in a variety of conditions. The SEC is tough. All of the teams are ranked within the top-70 which was not the case two years ago. The teams at the bottom have definitely gotten better. It’s just one of those things where you hope everything comes together.”

“Alabama is ranked number one right now and they're tough to beat. But they’re beatable. As long as we rely on our experience on the golf course, and keep doing the good things we’ve been doing and eliminate as many of the poor choices, we’ll be fine.”