Kortan, A&M men's golf will travel to Florida for Sea Best Invitational

After a successful fall, Texas A&M men's golf will get the spring slate going with the Sea Best Invitational, beginning on Monday in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Head coach Brian Kortan joined TexAgs Live to provide an update on his 2024-25 squad.

Key notes from Brian Kortan interview

• We leave tomorrow to go to Jacksonville for the Sea Best Invitational. We come back from that, here for a few days, head to Hawaii for a week, and then we're back. Then it's basically about every 10 days till conference play. It comes at you quick.
   
• There's always stuff on the calendar. There's a rhythm to it. We do it by design so the guys can come back and work on things. It's not easy to go do what we do and then come back and have to handle school and all that stuff. The guys get to look forward to some really cool events. They compete their tails off when they're at home. I have 10 guys, and they all want to be with us on the road. We have to give those guys opportunities.
   
• The competition at home, and we've got a really nice culture where the guys push each other and root for each other. A lot of support back home and a lot of guys working their tail off to get in the lineup. It's a good thing.
   
• Wheaton Ennis played in the Patriot All-America Invitational. That was kind of a home game for him. He spends some of the time in the winter down there. Idaho is not golf conducive in the winter. I like it when he's down there cause that keeps him off the snowboard. He played in the Patriot All-America Invitational and had a couple of good rounds in there. He had a bad stretch one round, but it's nice to kind of keep the blood circulating a little bit for the golf game.
   
• A&M is a place that Wheaton targeted pretty early in terms of wanting to be in a place in Texas. He likes who we are. We got wind of it early, recruited him well and created a great relationship with him. He genuinely loves being an Aggie. The sport is really important to him and he likes that side of it, the education obviously is a good thing, but the golf program and how we do things really resonated with him. He made his way to College Station, and we're grateful to have him.
   
• Wheaton had the clinching match for team Asia-Pacific over team Europe. He made it all the way to Dubai. He played really well. He kind of found himself a little bit this fall. It's a new world for him a little bit in terms of what's coming up, so he had a hard time separating what things looked like in the future vs. what he was doing at that moment. He's really worked hard on staying where his feet are and keeping the main thing the main thing, which is our mantra with him. If he plays his level of golf, he's excellent. He's a really high-end player and our lead dog on this team.
   
• The Atlantic Beach Invitional in Jacksonville, the timing is really good. You get over there, and it looks like the weather will be good. It's an old country club. We've never been to this place. They've played at TPC Sawgrass in years past, this year, they moved it to Atlantic Beach. It'll be a good club. It's a nice field to start the spring in, gets us over there on some green grass and some temperatures in the 70s. It'll be a good trip to kind of get your feet wet. We just got back from Palm Springs, where we took everybody, practiced for a few days and played a match with Stanford, which was excellent. They did a really nice job setting that up for us. It got everybody on the road, and everybody played a match, so that was a good trip.
   
• Valentine's weekend in Hawaii is the John A. Burns Intercollegiate, and A&M's been every year. It's a good bridge. You're in Hawaii, which is awesome. We use it for recruiting, but it's a nice bridge to get us from the middle of February all the way to March. Because you come back, and you have a week and a half, and then it's March, and you're finally kind of out of the woods with the weather here in Texas. It sets us up for what we look at for the rest of spring. We take a few extra guys and get some reps. They like the golf course, and it's a good time to be together.
   
• Daniel Rodrigues has been playing professionally now for a little while, and he's back home in Portugal. They have a nice winter series. A good competitive winter series, and he's had some really nice weeks and been close, and he got over the hump and won one. It's keeping him fresh. His game is improving, and he is growing as a professional. He'll start playing some more over there, probably in late spring. He'll play some challenger stuff and really start playing some higher-level stuff.
   
• Dan Erickson got his DP World Tour card. Dan's a really talented kid. He's always been fun to watch with the golf ball, and he can get on runs, or he can play some really good golf. Really awesome to see him get that. He's been playing World League golf all over the place, from South Africa to Europe to stuff in the States. For him to get his card and have a pretty good schedule, that's a big thing for a young player. He'll have a lot of company over there. We have a lot of Aggies that play over there. One that lives in town, Johannes Veerman, I think he's in the top 150 in the world now, and he won one of their big events right before Christmas down in South Africa.
   
• Sam Bennett is third on the Korn Ferry Tour. He's just getting started. I spoke to him the other day, and he's excited for the year. He learned a lot last year and he knows what he's got to do to get better. He's a competitive son of a gun. He doesn't like playing bad. The first couple of weeks, he's kind of dusting the rust off, and now he's back into it. He's excited about this week, this is a course he played well last year.
   
• Every year is different. I think we're getting close to what I'd like to see. Obviously, we need to continue to get better. In terms of kind of getting things right, Aaron Pounds played really well at home when it started translating on the road. Wheaton is a solid freshman player who has put some good rounds together. We've got other guys that have really improved a bunch and put their best foot forward this fall and started to push some guys around in terms of how they played.
   
• We should have some fluctuation in our lineup a little bit. We have had some pretty steady guys, though. Michael Heidelbaugh is in there. He's been pretty steady for us. It's a good group, kind of a good mix of ages. Nothing really fazes these guys. We do a good job of keeping the pedal down a little bit and working hard.