The varsity men’s golf team isn’t the only golf team on campus that has found national success and placed well in its matches. Over the upcoming holiday weekend, State’s club golf team will travel to the South Carolina Open at Farmstead Golf Links, where an opportunity to qualify for the national tournament awaits.
The national tournament is held in Virginia April 18 and 19. With a fifth place finish or better, the team will have accumulated enough points on the season to make the trip to nationals.
“As a team, we’ve all been working all semester,” Brian Cox, a sophomore in communication media, said. “We always practice on weekends when we don’t have tournaments to get ready for it. It would mean a lot to make it to nationals in our first year, so we could get some national notoriety.”
This is the team’s second semester as an organized club, and it is currently a part of the National Collegiate Club Golf Association. The NCCGA features 33 teams, including regional rivals Duke, Wake Forest and UNC-Chapel Hill. The team also plays against ECU, UNC Wilmington, Elon and Coastal Carolina. By the fall of 2009, it will be officially recognized as a club sport on campus.
The River Ridge Golf Club in Raleigh is the current home for the team and it has been generous in allowing use of its facilities for the team’s individual qualifiers. When everyone has a weekend off from match play, the golfers meet to practice and decide who qualifies for upcoming tournaments.
To prepare for regional play, the team faced off against Duke in March and defeated the Devils by a stoke total of 478 to 512. Will Vanlandingham, a sophomore in business administration, placed first overall with a score of 72, just one over par.
The team participated in its first regional match March 28 and 29 at Deercroft Country Club in Pinehurst, N.C. and finished ninth overall as a collective group.
John Sanderson, a junior in biomedical engineering, is serving his first semester as the club president. He said due to the efforts of each team member, the club is headed in the right direction.
“We’ve put a lot of time and effort into setting a good foundation for the club, so we can continue to grow,” Sanderson said.
Sanderson and his teammates plan to forge a connection with the Lonnie Poole Golf Course, slated to open at the end of May.
“I anticipate the club growing tremendously after the opening, as it can provide a more centralized and affordable venue for our members,” Sanderson said.
Aside from pursuing official certification as a club sport, Anderson identified team expenses as another primary hurdle the golfers have had to overcome.
“Golf is a very expensive sport, and it can be hard on the wallets of college students,” Anderson said. “I knew we needed some outside funding in order to get enough participation from our members.”
To get the best bang for its buck, the team sought out assistance from the Student Senate Appropriations Committee and received $1,230 this semester. While providing a great deal of financial relief, more than half of the playing costs on the year had to come from the wallets of the golfers.
