The regular season is nearing its close for the No. 4 Texas men’s golf team, which will travel to Richmond Hill, Ga., to compete in the Ford Collegiate, April 13-14.
It marks the Longhorn’s final event before the Southeastern Conference Championship, set for April 22-26.
Texas enters the tournament as the defending champion after capturing the team title last season. Then-freshman Daniel Bennett birdied two of the final three holes to tie for third individually and lift the Longhorns to their fifth team victory of the season.
However, Texas does not enter the event with quite the same momentum as it carried a year ago, when it recorded four team wins, along with a runner-up finish in its first seven spring tournaments.
So far this spring, the Longhorns only boast one first-place finish at the Arizona N.I.T. in January. Still, Texas has produced several strong results, with its lowest finish being fourth at the notoriously difficult Southern Highlands Collegiate.
“I feel like they’ve done well,” head coach John Fields said. “Could we do better? Absolutely. Are we trying to get better? Yes. And are we satisfied with what we’ve done? No, we’re always trying to get better.”
Even without replicating last year’s impressive success, the Longhorns have all of the pieces to contend for a second straight title in Richmond Hill. Texas currently has three players ranked in the top 10 of PGA TOUR University — No. 2 Christiaan Maas, No. 3 Tommy Morrison and No. 7 Luke Potter — in a program that ranks graduating seniors based on their performance over the last two years. Maas also sits at No. 12 in the individual rankings of all collegiate golfers.
Those pieces, however, must connect all at once to ensure the same success.
“We have a team that’s capable of winning any tournament that we’re playing in, but our responsibility is to show up prepared to play,” Fields said. “We’re a team sport, but we also are a sport that, for sure, requires our guys to be sensational all the time.”
The two-day event features quite the strong field, including five top-25 and two top-10 programs in the latest Scoreboard powered by Clippd rankings: No. 1 Auburn, No. 7 LSU, No. 16 Oklahoma, No. 19 Georgia Tech and No. 23 Georgia.
The level of competition is nothing new for the Longhorns, who are coming off a third-place finish at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational. It was one of the deepest fields Texas has faced all season, featuring nine top-25 teams.
Among next week’s field, Auburn has posed the biggest challenge for Texas thus far, placing ahead of the Longhorns in each spring tournament the two teams have shared.
Like Texas, the Tigers will look to make a statement in their final tune-up before postseason play.
Meanwhile, the Longhorns will aim to build some momentum of their own and hope last season’s success will carry over as they prepare for a likely rematch with the nation’s best at the SEC Championship in Saint Simons Island, Ga.
“You can look at our winning percentage and know we’ve had a solid year,” Fields said. “But what we’re trying to do is get to a place where we’re all playing really good golf at the same time. Ideally, that would be during the postseason.”
