Texas men’s golf holds all the cards in quest for NCAA title

By Steve Habel, Senior Contributing Writer

AUSTIN — Youth, it has been said, is mostly wasted on the young.

The underclassmen of the Texas men’s golf team are on a quest to dispel that notion and make a real push for the Longhorns’ first national title on the links since 2012.

It helps to have practice facilities and amenities that are among the best in the nation as well as one of the top collegiate courses anywhere in the University of Texas Golf Club, a track good enough to be one of the NCAA Division I regional sites this spring.

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The eighth-ranked Longhorns, buoyed by the tied-for-first-place individual finish of freshman Cole Hammer, earned second place Tuesday after 54 holes of competition at the Southern Highlands Collegiate Classic in Las Vegas.

Hammer, Texas taking aim at title

Hammer’s 8-under-par 64 in the final round was a season-low and featured nine birdies, eight pars, and single bogey. He climbed 13 spots on the individual leaderboard and finished his three rounds tied first with UNLV’s Jack Trent. Hammer then fell to Trent on the third hole of a sudden-death playoff.

Hammer has shot 64 twice this season and twice in the last five rounds. He has five rounds in the 60s and has shot seven of his 12 rounds at or under par in, this, his first season on the 40 Acres.

“Playing golf at the University of Texas and at a high level is something I’ve worked for and hoped for my whole life,” Hammer said. “Being a part of this team is really special, and I’m having a blast.”

Fellow freshman Parker Coody carded all three rounds at or under par for a season-best tie for fourth at Southern Highlands. He made 26 pars for the second-most of any player in the field and has two-straight finishes in the top-12 after he tied for 12th at the Amer Ari Invitational in February.

Freshman Pierceson Coody, Parker’s twin brother, shot a third-round 74 to tie for 37th. The Coody twins, who played high school golf in Dallas, are the grandsons of 1971 Masters Tournament champion Charles Coody, so golf is in their blood.

Junior Spencer Soosman and senior Steven Chervony tied for 55th at 8-over. As a team, the Longhorns made a field-best 56 birdies.

Oklahoma won the tournament by one stroke at 14-under par.

Hammer hails from Houston and made his verbal commitment to Texas as an eighth grader in 2012, the same year three-time major winner Jordan Spieth led the Longhorns to the NCAA title. He qualified for the 2015 U.S. Open as a 15-year-old and played a practice round with Spieth at Chambers Bay Golf Course that year.

Spieth, as you might remember, captured the event with a birdie on the final hole.

Spieth has lasting impact on Horns

Spieth is one of the best players to ever tee it up at Texas (even though he was a Longhorn for only a year) and has had as much impact with his checkbook and his notion of golf design as with his continued success.

Two years ago, Spieth helped finance a practice facility at the UT Golf Club that has six holes, none longer than 125 yards, with regulation putting surfaces (one is even patterned after the famed seventh hole at Riviera Golf Club) and bunkers.

He also helped design the practice course – called the Spieth Lower Forty – along with Texas-ex Roy Bechtol, a noted golf course architect who also routed the club’s full-size track.

The Spieth Lower Forty is a blast to play – this reporter did just that last week with Hammer and Soosman – and it’s a real tool for honing the Longhorns’ short game.

“This short-game practice area, combined with what we think is a very good golf course, are a great help to our team,” Texas coach John Fields said. “Lots of teams have great courses or great practice area, but we are one of the few that has both.”

Just like the facilities with every other sport in the Power Five conferences if you are not getting a little better, you are falling behind. Fields said Texas is one step ahead of the game with the Spieth Lower Forty.

“It allows us to better prepare our team for competition and allows us to recruit a little better,” Fields explained. “We try to leverage the success we’ve had both historically and recently, and this is just another part of the package we can offer the better golfers when they are considering where to play collegiately.”

Longhorns in transition

This Longhorns are transitioning out of a group that’s been reliant on a succession of All-Americans such as Doug Ghim, Scottie Scheffler, and Beau Hossler into one with three freshman among its top players and a lone senior leader in Chevrony.

Fields has relied on Chevrony to be a bridge between Texas most recent really good team that lost in the national championship match in 2017 to Oregon, and this year’s youthful squad.

Chevrony, who has three top-14 results, including a third-place finish at the Gopher Invitational to start the season and a ninth-place finish at the Amer Ari in Hawai’i last month, said he’s learning from his teammates a much as he’s guiding.

“It’s been interesting because the guys before me have been really great players. I’ve learned a lot. But the kids on this team are really good, too, and I’m learning from them every day. Sometimes I’ll tell them something and other times they will show me something. It’s been a good experience.”

Fields said he has a good team, one that can win the national championship, but everything needs to fall right. Success breeds success, and the Longhorns’ ability to remain on the short list of the best teams in the nation attracts players that want and thrive in the heat of the battle.

“There is a method to our madness,” Fields said. “We want kids to come here because they are very, very competitive. We have guys that know if they can win on this level then they can take the step up to the PGA Tour.”

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