The Georgia men’s golf team will begin its quest for the program’s third national title on Friday in the NCAA Championships at the par-70, 7,014-yard Eugene (Ore.) Country Club.
Team and individual stroke play will take place Friday through Monday, with the top eight squads after 72 holes qualifying for match play. The match play quarterfinals and semifinals are slated for Tuesday and the championship match is scheduled for Wednesday.
“Our guys know what’s at stake this week,” Georgia head coach Chris Haack said. “We have the opportunity to play for the national championship. This has the chance to be a week of golf that they will never forget. Our 1999 and 2005 players are forever connected by their national titles, and I would love nothing more than for these guys to get one, too. We’ve been playing pretty solid golf and we know if we continue to play well that good things can happen. We’re going to take it one step at a time. We hope to play well each round and try to get to match play and then see what happens from there. This is the most important tournament of the year and our guys are extremely dialed in.”
The Bulldogs, who are seeded sixth and are ranked fourth by Golfweek and sixth by Golfstat, will tee off on Friday in 11-minute increments between 3:42 and 4:26 p.m. EDT and on Saturday between 10:22 and 11:06 a.m. EDT. Georgia will be paired with Illinois and Oklahoma State in the first two rounds. Sunday’s pairings will be determined by the 36-hole results. Following Sunday’s round, the field will be cut to the low 15 teams for Monday final stroke play loop.
The Bulldogs will use a lineup of seniors Lee McCoy and Sepp Straka, junior Greyson Sigg, sophomore Zach Healy and freshman Tye Waller. That quintet is a perfect 2-0 this season with wins in the SEC Championship and the NCAA Tuscaloosa Regional. McCoy leads the Bulldogs with a scoring average of 69.97 (ahead of his school-record 70.08 set last year), followed by Sigg at 71.06, Healy at 71.47, Straka at 71.59 and Waller at 73.82.
McCoy, Straka, Sigg and Healy were in the lineup last year when Georgia advanced to the national semifinals after entering as the 26th seed.
“Last year, we were pretty up and down. But this year, we’ve been really steady,” Sigg said. “We’re going in this year and we’ll play as hard as we can and see what happens. We know what it takes and we have a full expectation to win the golf tournament.”
“We couldn’t be coming into this week in any better position,” McCoy said. “We got a conference win, a Regional win, and we swept the individuals at both. We’re looking as good as we’ve looked in awhile as a program. Our team chemistry is great. It’s definitely the best group of guys we’ve had since I’ve been here. I’m honored to get to go out there with them.”
The Golf Channel will air live coverage from Monday’s stroke-play final round at 7 p.m. EDT, Tuesday’s match-play quarterfinals at 1:30 p.m. EDT, Tuesday’s match-play semifinals at 6:30 p.m. EDT and Wednesday’s match-play finals at 6 p.m. EDT.
In addition, the Golf Channel will be on-site beginning on Sunday to provide coverage on Golf Central, Morning Drive and GolfChannel.com. Live scoring and tee times for the NCAAs can be found at Golfstat.com and NCAA.com.
