Player’s Tribune: Southern Virginia’s Men’s Golf Fall 2021 Recap
By Jake Hanchett
Jake Hanchett, originally from Arizona, is a junior at Southern Virginia University and a member of the men’s golf team.
Did you know that Southern Virginia University has a men’s golf team? We just had our most successful season since the restart of the program back in 2017.
2021 Southern Virginia University Men’s Fall Golf Season recap:
The team broke records for 18 and 36 hole scores. The team won 2 of 4 tournaments and have only been beaten by 2 Division 3 teams this fall.
Individual records for 18 and 36 holes were set by Nate Preslar (’24) and the team had 2 players win a tournament: Charles Price (“24) and Kaden Ford (‘25). It’s difficult to win a golf tournament, so to have two guys do it was awesome.
Our national ranking is 75 out of 287 Division 3 teams and 8th in our region of 60 teams.
We have improved our ranking each year and we aim to be in the top 50 by the end of the year.
Coach Blair Garner, the men’s and women’s golf head coach, says in regards to the program’s history, “Southern Virginia University had a golf program several years ago before the NCAA Division 3 era. In the fall of 2017 SVU re-started a men’s and women’s [golf] program with a full time-coach. Cameron Speyer and Bailey Rusick (Vincent) were the first members of the men’s and women’s teams and helped spearhead getting the teams off the ground.We had five men at the start of our first season. Our tournament was in Cape Charles, VA. at the Bay Creek Golf Course. We competed in the Capital Athletic Conference. Since then, the team has grown in numbers and has been breaking individual and team records each year.”
Garner also remarked on what traits make a good competitive golfer. “Passion and resiliency. Golf is the most complicated sport to master. There’s the power game off the tee while maintaining accuracy. Around the green there are countless finesse shots a player needs to be able to execute. Putting on the greens requires the touch of a surgeon that only comes from hours of practice. Competitive golfers need to be able to deal with adversity. Dealing with setbacks and obstacles is the nature of golf.”
Golf is a game that is played in the elements. Weather can actually have a huge impact on the way golf is played. When it is windy, players tend to hit their longer clubs into greens, flight the ball lower to keep it under the wind, and swing smoother.
The wind can have a lot of impact on the ball. Once a ball is hit into the air, it is in the control of the golf course. A golfer can hit a shot how he wanted to pull it off, but sometimes the golf gods have their own reward system.
The classic example of this happened to me in my sophomore golf season here at Southern Virginia University. I was about to tee off on hole 8 at Carlisle Barracks Golf Course. It was a 395 yard par 4. The whole left side of this particular hole is out of bounds. The right side has some large trees that can make for a difficult approach shot. The center of the hole is a narrow fairway. It is a demanding tee shot, but a crucial one. If a player wants to have a solid round, they need to conquer it.
I hit a solid driver, at least that’s what I thought. It was going straight down the middle of the hole and I began to feel relieved. As I was picking my tee from off the ground, I saw my ball hit the 150 yard stake in the middle of the fairway, and shoot directly 70 yards straight backwards. It made for a much tougher second shot.
A player can hit a fantastic shot, but the golf course can deny it. Unlucky bounces are probably the worst. This is when a player hits a ball, and they think the ball is going to bounce a certain way based on how it was hit. Sometimes it can bounce in a direction the player doesn’t want and it can lead to extra shots added to the scorecard. Nothing is more frustrating than hitting a golf ball flush and having thinking that the ball will be close to the hole, and then it ends up kicking left over the green, off the cart path, and then going out of bounds.
When bad breaks occur, the best mentality to have is focus on the very next shot. A golfer doesn’t have enough time in a round to dwell on a bad shot because in a few short minutes they will have another one to make. Having a “short term memory” on the golf course gives a player the chance to self motivate, regroup, and relax. When players can master this mind game, they can get into a rhythm and become pretty tough to stop. The player is putting all their focus and energy into every shot, and is not on the past.
Focusing on the present in golf allows the player to put full focus into the next shot attempt and frees the body of tension. When a player can do that, they perform at their best. It’s a good mindset to have not just in golf but also in life: What is in the past is in the past. I cannot change it, but I can change the present.
Coach Garner states, “The best players are usually those that are able to follow up a miss hit with a great hit. They rebound from a bad hole with a great hole. They realize it will be a battle and they never stop getting up from getting knocked down.”
In competitive golf, a course is typically 6600 yards, or 3.75 miles long with 18 holes. In a tournament, a player must be able to carry or use a push cart and must walk the 18 holes because that is the tradition of tournament play. A player typically carries their own bag, which can weigh about 15–25 pounds. Competitive golf is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. It is about a four and a half hour straight mental grind from start to finish.
Garner is excited about the upcoming spring 2022 season. “We started a tradition of having high quality student-athletes on our teams. That tradition continues and I feel that is our biggest selling point on playing at Southern Virginia, and it’s what I’m most proud of our teams. Our men will be playing in the USA South Conference this year for the first time. It’s one of the toughest conferences in the country. I’m excited to see how we will do in the spring when the men play our first USA South conference tournament.”
