By Foster Nicholas | Sports Writer
With a postseason run in the rearview mirror, Baylor men’s golf looks to take the success from last year and claw its way back to the national stage.
Head coach Mike McGraw and the Bears will tee off the season on Saturday at the Valero Texas Collegiate at TPC San Antonio. The three-day event will conclude Monday. Baylor returned nine players and added two new faces in the offseason to bolster a roster that made it to the NCAA Championship a year ago. With familiar talent expected to be in the lineup, McGraw anticipates more from his group in 2023-24.
“My goal is to see this team achieve at an even higher level than last year’s team did — which I guess, if you were just going on paper, it would look like that should happen anyway,” McGraw said. “But that’s not the way life works, so we still have to get up and accomplish all the things. This team made the national championship last year, which was great, but my belief is that they’ll be better than they were last year.”
The Bears made it to Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., thanks to graduate students Johnny Keefer and Tyler Isenhart, as well as junior Zach Heffernan. The Bears look to utilize these returners in hopes of another deep run. The green and gold have the opportunity to start on a strong note at a course that has become familiar to many players on the roster.
“We’ve really only had a couple of actual team practices; the rest of the time has been spent qualifying,” McGraw said. “The guys have had to go through qualifying rounds to actually play and earn their spot on the team. It’s been pretty intense. The last three rounds of qualifying were over Labor Day weekend at TPC San Antonio, where we’re playing the tournament this week. We actually went down there and played our last qualifying portion on the course where we’re going to compete.”
Heffernan, a Boerne native, has played at the course many times since it’s so close to home. Although he doesn’t see the tournament as more important than any other, he does believe the previous experience on the tricky course will help the squad rise to the top.
“It was nice to get to play it three times, because it’s not the kind of course you can play a practice round and go to the first round,” Heffernan said. “You want some comfortability off some of those tee shots, because there are some where you see it once and you’re still not set where you actually need to hit it.”
