Dec. 6, 2005
ATLANTA – Head coach Bruce Heppler earned midseason coach of the year honors, and junior Kevin Larsen made the 12-man midseason All-American team chosen by Golf World magazine, capping a robust fall schedule for Georgia Tech’s golf team.
Tech swings back into action in February, beginning its spring slate at the UH-Hilo Invitational in Waikoloa, Hawai’i. It starts a busy stretch in which the Jackets work toward the ACC Championship in late April and a bid to the NCAA Championship in May.
The Yellow Jackets, who won one of their five fall events and finished in the top four of the rest, are ranked No. 2 in the nation by the magazine and by the Golf Coaches Association after the fall season. Golfweek magazine has the Yellow Jackets ranked No. 3 behind Georgia and Oklahoma State.
Heppler earned the coaching honor after Tech earned two runner-up finishes (Golfweek Preview Invitational and Hooters Collegiate Match Play), as well as a third- and a fourth-place showing, despite having as many as four freshmen competing in a given event. The Jackets reached the final of the Hooters Collegiate Match Play Championship and nearly knocked off top-ranked Georgia in the championship match despite not having Larsen and All-American Roberto Castro in the lineup.
Larsen, a junior from Santa Barbara, Calif., who had recorded only two top-10 finishes in 21 career events prior to this season, finished in the top four individually in each of the other four fall events. He led the team in stroke average at 70.83 and ranks No. 4 in the nation in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.
Freshmen Taylor Hall and Cameron Tringale each had a top-5 finish and finished the fall with stroke averages under 74. Tech’s two other freshmen, Adam Cohan and David Dragoo, each won three matches at the Hooters Match Play event. Castro finished in the top 20 of all four events, posted a 71.25 stroke average and is ranked No. 9 nationally.
Following are some thoughts from head coach Bruce Heppler looking back on the fall season:
Sum up the fall and how it went for you versus what you expected at the beginning.
“Obviously there were a lot of questions that were going to have to be answered and certain things needed to happen for us to play at a high level. One of those was Kevin Larsen’s development. Here’s a highly recruited guy who played below his standards for two years. Kevin’s become a nationally competitive guy. If that continues, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t, that makes our team very competitive, because you’ve got him and Roberto who could both make first-team all-America based on their standing halfway through the year. When you have two first-team all-Americans you’ve got a chance to beat anybody.
“The other thing we needed was two of our four freshmen to play well, and I think between the mix of them, they have. Obviously Cameron (Tringale) was the most successful if you look on average at what he’d done at home and on the road. He got to play every time, and the finish over in Birmingham in the top four was terrific. That’s the only one where he played well all three rounds. He shot an under-par round on the last round of the Preview out in Oregon, and there were not many of those. David Dragoo won three matches at the Match Play, and Adam won three matches at the Match Play, and it allowed our young guys to get a lot of experience.
“I think we got a wealth of experience for guys who hadn’t played and we managed to do that and be ranked second or third in the country, which is probably more than anybody could have hoped for at this point. I’m very pleased. It’s a very good team to coach. They work hard in the weight room, they work hard at the golf course, and they are very much a team in the things that they do. They like each other. I think they are in a place where we can improve as the spring goes along, which is what you want.
“Another thought about the fall – I’ve always thought that the Preview was an advantage because you get four rounds on the golf course where you are going to play the national championship. But, the double bonus is we played well again, everyone liked the golf course, and we finished well. If we can return to Sunriver, and if it’s some of these same five guys getting on the plane, there is going to be a real optimistic approach to going out there, not just because it’s the national championship, because we played well, and they liked it and that always helps. Hopefully we’ll play well enough to be selected to the regionals and play well enough to advance. If we do, I think it will be a real positive for us.”
All through the fall, you’ve really stuck to your guns in terms of having guys earn their way on the travel squad through qualifying. Even with that, all the freshmen managed to play in at least a couple of events. How much does that help your team out, as much as it helps them?
“I think competition is the key to everything. If you make it harder to get out of town and have more pressure to get out of town than it is to play on the road, then you make tournaments easier for them. If a guy is having to make six foot puts, hit good wedges and a good drive on the last hole to get to go, then he’s going to be able to stand up to that when he’s out there playing in a tournament. I believe all of the competing we did was part of the reason why we were successful and competitive once we got to the tournaments. Some of these guys really didn’t seem to bat an eye when they had their chance, and hopefully it’s because it’s hard around here at Tech.”
In the Hooters Match Play, in particular, you had all four freshmen playing well. How big was that?
“It was terrific. We showed up down there, and a lot of people thought I was crazy, but they are Georgia Tech players, and we don’t recruit bad players. We’re not going to take a bad player to the tournament, and it just worked out. But, as you saw them have to make putts, it was almost more like a qualifier, because it’s match play, it’s guy on guy, and it’s just a different game because there is a lot of winning and losing within the round rather than just in the end of the round. I think for those young guys, it was a terrific experience, and everybody should benefit from that. It was a great experience for Mike (Barbosa). I don’t know that he’d had the fall that he’d hoped to have had, but to beat Alejandro Canizares and Brian Harman will hopefully get his year kick-started.”
What accounted for Barbosa’s struggles, and what accounted for his turnaround at the Match Play event?
“Mike wants to be an All-American. I think for most of the fall, he just tried too hard, because he wants it worse than I do or you do. He knows this is his last chance to do that. But, he went down to the match play with those young guys and just cut it loose and played great. He needs to learn from that, and I expect him to have a good spring. If Mike plays well, then we’ve got a really good chance to have a great team in the spring.”
Kevin Larsen just seemed to have come out of nowhere, especially after not playing much in the summer time. Did the fact that he didn’t play much in the summertime work as it did with Chan Song last year?
“It may have. He’s probably gone home the last two summers frustrated, angry, mad and maybe he just needed to get away from it. He’s worked on his conditioning, and maybe he needed to get away from the frustration because he seems much more at ease. Once he played well one time, his confidence started to come back. The only surprise is that we didn’t really see it coming. I saw his ability from the minute he walked in his freshman year. We just were hoping at some point that Kevin would be successful, and hopefully that’s what has happened now. He’s just competing, and he’s not caught in between. I think those things he tried to work on now are showing up and some of them aren’t. He really hit the ball great in the fall, he chipped and putted the ball well, and he’s close to having a great year.”
Roberto played consistently well like he always does.
“He just plays. I know that he wants to win a tournament, and he works at it and is competitive as anybody. I think now he just has to get out of his own way. He’s more than good enough to win. The great thing about Roberto is before the tournament is over, he’s going to finish around the top 10 or higher, and that’s a real credit to his competitiveness. That’s a sign of a really good player who just plays well every single time.”
Do you feel like you are in a position now where you aren’t worried about your five guys that you are playing?
“Yes, I don’t think it matters who goes. There are a couple of guys who have shown that we need them in the lineup for us to be competitive, but after Kevin and Roberto, those guys are all about the same. I think that no matter which group of guys get to go that week, we’ll be successful. I do think with younger guys, we have a chance to improve. They should only gain more confidence as the year goes on. If I do the right things and motivate each of them the right way, the younger guys should grow, and we should have a chance at the end.”
Will your approach towards qualifying stay the same in the spring?
“It has to. It’s been the basis of everything we’ve done, it’s the way they were recruited. Our guys were recruited knowing that they would have a chance. They know if you miss two weeks in a row, you still have a chance to go on that third one. I think that keeps everybody working and everybody involved for most of the year, because you have a chance. Even if a guy doesn’t make it this year, the work that he does in January, February or March may not produce an NCAA appearance for him this year, but may be the reason why he makes it down the road.”
