Men’s Golf Bound for NCAA Championship

Friday, May 24

Fayetteville, Ark. - Blessings GC

Baylor

NCAA Championship Stroke Play

Men’s Golf Bound for NCAA Championship

5/23/2019 7:42:00 AM | Men's Golf

Bears making school-record fourth consecutive NCAA Championship appearance

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Sometimes, it's a short trip from the penthouse to the outhouse.
            Baylor men's golf experienced that last year. After losing to eventual national champion Oklahoma in the match play quarterfinals in 2017 – coming that close to hoisting a trophy – the Bears finished 30^thout of 30 teams at last year's NCAA Championship and 28 strokes out of the first cut.
            "We learned that the game of golf humbles you," said Baylor coach Mike McGraw, whose team is back in the NCAA Championship for a program-record fourth year in a row. "Finishing 30^thout of 30 teams is a bad experience. If you don't learn from it, it's just a bad experience. If you learn from it, then it's an experience that made you better."
            Ranked 23^rdafter a third-place finish at the Louisville (Ky.) Regional, Baylor is paired with No. 22 Liberty and 24^th-ranked Illinois for Friday's opening round of stroke play at the Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. The 30-team field will be trimmed to the top 15 after Sunday's third round and then to eight for the start of match play on Tuesday.
            "We're tied for the lead right now in the national championship," McGraw said. "Honestly, it doesn't really matter what's happened in the whole rest of the year. If you can flip a switch and figure out how to be patient, figure out how to be smart, figure out how to be composed . . . if all those things we've been preaching about all year come to fruition this week, anyone can win a national championship.
            "It's obvious we're an underdog, we wouldn't be picked to win the national championship. But, I kind of like that, guys playing with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder."
            It's not a stretch to say that Baylor is playing its best golf at the right time. The Bears have shot under par in four of their last five rounds, including 7-under 277 on the final day at Louisville.
            "We're in a really good spot," said senior Garrett May, who is second on the team with a 71.77-stroke average after a top-10 finish at regionals. "We've quietly this season just put confidence on top of confidence, momentum on top of momentum. We finished third at regionals, so nobody's probably really looking at us. But, at the same time, we played really solid. And this is nationals, baby, you have to get up for that. I really like our chances."
            What makes this team so good is its strength from top to bottom. There's less than a stroke-per-round difference between junior Colin Kober (71.73) and sophomore Ryan Grider (72.72), as good a No. 5 golfer as there is in the country.
            "He hits it a mile, and his short game, I've never seen it better," May said of Grider, who shot 1-under-par 212 to tie for 18^that Louisville. "It's amazing to have him as our (number) 5 guy. To go to any school and have a caliber of player as him as your 5 guy, you know you have a really special team. I expect him to be top of the leaderboard come fourth round of stroke play."
            McGraw said Grider struggled with confidence last year despite being in the lineup most of the year, averaging 73.76 strokes per round and recording three top-25 finishes as a freshman.
            "This year, he's continually chipped away at it, and I think he's faced his golfing demons, if you will, head on, and has started driving the ball great," McGraw said. "When you carry the ball 310 yards in the air, and it's actually going straight, that's a pretty powerful weapon. Just ask a guy like Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy. They drive it long and straight. I don't want to jinx him or anything, but Ryan is driving the ball better, he's putting better. I think every part of Ryan's game is better than it was a year ago."
            This year's team has loads of national championship experience, with senior Braden Bailey making his fourth appearance and May and junior Cooper Dossey going for the third straight year. Kober, who has a 4.0 cumulative GPA as an accounting major, was the repeat winner of the NCAA Elite 90 Award and is in the lineup this time after being the alternate each of the last two trips.
            "We are playing better than we have all spring," McGraw said. "We're playing a lot better than we were earlier in the spring. I don't know if you would call it peaking, but we are definitely trending in the right direction."
            While making it to nationals is impressive all by itself, especially four years in a row, McGraw said the goal is to "make a little noise" and get to match play.
            "I think none of us are ever thinking that we're not going to make nationals," said Dossey, who is third on the team with a 71.88 average. "All of us believe that we're good enough to win nationals. I don't think our mentality has ever been let's get to nationals and let's go out and play golf. It's more like it's a business trip, we're going to win. I think we all believe that. I think if we can make match play this week, we can do something really special."
           Live scoring is available at www.golfstat.com, with the Golf Channel providing coverage of Monday's final round of stroke play and the match play quarterfinals, semifinals and Wednesday's championship.

WACO, Texas – Baylor men's golf is headed to the 2019 NCAA Men's Golf Championship, which runs Friday through Wednesday at Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. The Bears will extend their school record with a fourth consecutive NCAA Championship appearance and will compete at the Championship for the ninth time in program history.

A 30-team field will compete for the national title on the par-72, 7,550-yard course at Blessings. All 30 teams are scheduled for three rounds of stroke play Friday through Sunday. The top 15 teams and top nine individuals not on those teams continue to Monday's fourth round of stroke play, and the top eight teams after 72 holes move on to match play to determine the national champion. The individual national champion will be crowned after Monday's fourth round of stroke play.

Quarterfinals and semifinals matches are scheduled for Tuesday, and the national title match will be played Wednesday. Golf Channel will provide live coverage of the tournament beginning with Monday's final round of stroke play and culminating with Wednesday's national title match.

Baylor's lineup is led by senior Garrett May in the No. 1 spot. He's followed by junior Cooper Dossey at No. 2, junior Colin Kober at No. 3, senior Braden Bailey at No. 4 and sophomore Ryan Grider at No. 5. Sophomore Mark Reppe is the Bears' designated alternate, and he can be subbed into the lineup in between any round throughout the Championship.

Bailey will become the first player in program history to compete at four NCAA Championships. May and Dossey will appear in their third consecutive Championships, while Grider is appearing in the Bears' Championship lineup for a second consecutive season. Kober is making his NCAA Championship lineup debut after traveling to the last two NCAA Championships as the designated alternate, though he was not subbed into the lineup for either event.

Prior to the Championship, Kober was named winner of the NCAA Elite 90 Award for the second consecutive season. The Elite 90 is presented to the student‐athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA's championships. Kober, who holds a 4.0 cumulative grade point average while majoring in accounting, was presented with the award during the Championship banquet on Thursday morning.

Baylor is paired with Liberty and Illinois for Friday's first round, and those teams will tee off from No. 10 starting at 7:45 a.m. CT. Grider is up first for the Bears, followed by Bailey at 7:56 a.m., Kober at 8:07 a.m., Dossey at 8:18 a.m. and May at 8:29 a.m. The Bears will again play with Illinois and Liberty in Saturday's second round, though they'll start the second round from the first tee beginning at 1:05 p.m., with individual lineup order set by first-round results.

Live scoring for the NCAA Championship is available at www.golfstat.com. Follow @BaylorMGolf on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for updates throughout the season.

NCAA Championship Field (Regional Finish)
No. 1 Oklahoma State (1^st in Louisville)
No. 2 Arizona State (t-2^nd in Stanford)
No. 3 Wake Forest (3^rd in Myrtle Beach)
No. 4 Vanderbilt (3^rd in Athens)
No. 5 Oklahoma (3^rd in Pullman)
No. 6 Texas (1^st in Austin)
No. 7 USC (5^th in Austin)
No. 8 Georgia Tech (4^th in Pullman)
No. 9 Duke (2^nd in Athens)
No. 10 California (4^th in Myrtle Beach)
No. 11 Auburn (2^nd in Louisville)
No. 12 Stanford (1^st in Stanford)
No. 13 North Florida (5^th in Louisville)
No. 14 LSU (5^th in Stanford)
No. 16 Georgia (1^st in Athens)
No. 17 South Carolina (t-5^th in Pullman)
No. 18 Pepperdine (4^th in Austin)
No. 19 Clemson (3^rd in Austin)
No. 20 Texas A&M (1^st in Pullman)
No. 21 Louisville (4^th in Louisville)
No. 22 Liberty (5^th in Athens)
No. 23 Illinois (1^st in Myrtle Beach)
No. 25 Baylor (3^rd in Louisville)
No. 26 North Carolina (t-2^nd in Stanford)
No. 30 TCU (2^nd in Austin)
No. 32 BYU (2^nd in Pullman)
No. 34 UNLV (5^th in Myrtle Beach)
No. 46 Ohio State (2^nd in Myrtle Beach)
No. 58 Georgia Southern (4^th in Stanford)
No. 60 SMU (4^th in Athens)

BAYLOR NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP APPEARANCES
1960 – t-9^th
1966 – 24^th
1967 – t-31^st
2002 – 19^th
2010 – t-25^th
2016 – 27^th
2017 – t-5^th
2018 – 30^th
2019 –