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NCAA Golf Championship Preview: Pokes Go for No. 11

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Oklahoma State heads to Rich Harvest Farms just outside of Chicago for its 70th NCAA Men’s Golf Championship on Friday. The men are looking for that elusive 11th title and first since 2006. Let’s take a look at what to expect starting tomorrow.

Viewing Information
  • Stroke play: May 26-29 (Friday-Monday)
  • Match play: May 30-31
  • Broadcast:
    • May 29 from 4-7 p.m.
    • May 30 from 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 3:30-7 p.m.
    • May 31 from 3-7 p.m.

Four rounds of stroke play will take place and the low eight teams will be thrown into a match play bracket with the top team facing the team that came in 8th. Then it’s all five of your guys vs. all five of theirs. First to three matches moves on.

The Teams

Oklahoma State comes in as the No. 4 team in the country in the Sagarin rankings. Its primary challengers are LSU which won its regional by eight strokes, Vanderbilt, Stanford (which tied its regional with Bayl0r), USC (which won its regional by six), Illinois, Florida, Texas and Baylor.

As my pal Andy Johnson of The Fried Egg pointed out here, OSU actually has the lowest average player ranking for all five players of any team in the field. Its average player ranking is right around 40 which, when you consider the fact that you have to play five golfers, is astounding.

If OSU can get through the stroke play, it should have a massive advantage on the back side of some of the match play matchups with guys like Zach Bauchou and Hayden Wood ranked in the top 65 of all NCAA individuals facing the 4th and 5th best golfers from other schools.

Zach Olsen, Kristoffer Ventura and Viktor Hovland round out OSU’s five. None are ranked better than No. 25 in the nation. None are ranked worse than No. 62.

The Course

Rich Harvest Farms is a 50-mile drive from downtown Chicago and a 125-mile drive from Brad Underwood’s new house. Built in 1989, it has hosted multiple NCAA regionals, a Palmer Cup and a Western Am. Johnson does a terrific job breaking down the entire course here with this spicy tidbit leading the way.

Designed by its owner, golf enthusiast Jerry Rich, the legend of Rich Harvest Farms allegedly stems from Rich’s attempt to create his own Augusta National after he made the mistake of asking how much a membership would cost – one of the many unwritten rules you don’t break as a guest at Augusta. [Fried Egg]

The Women’s NCAA Championship is being held there right now, and some questionable architecture (to say the least) has been highlighted thus far.

The Quest

The closest OSU has gotten to title No. 11 since defeating Florida for No. 10 came in either 2010 (lost to Augusta in the finals), 2011 (lost to Augusta in the semifinals) or 2014 (lost to Alabama in the finals).

That 2011 team was lol loaded, and Patrick Reed did unspeakable things to them. It included three PGA/European Tour players (Morgan Hoffmann, Peter Uihlein and Kevin Tway) as well as Sean Einhaus and Talor Gooch (who is currently on the Web.com Tour).

There are no superstars on this year’s team — Olsen is the highest ranked at No. 28 in the NCAA individual rankings — but in a sport where depth is paramount (especially in match play), OSU thrives.

After taking down Texas by two on its home course in the regionals, head coach Allan Bratton sounded like he was already looking ahead (as he should be given that his predecessor was fired after missing the first NCAA Championship in OSU history).

“You always want to go into the nationals with momentum and, obviously, you have to take care of your business at the regionals,” said Bratton. “It’s always a potentially unsettling week. We didn’t get off to the greatest start in the first round, but I was pleased with what our guys did the last two days.”

Hopefully he’ll be saying the same thing come this time next week.

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