Red Raiders Complete First Practice Round
May 28, 2007 | Men's Golf
May 28, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Not since the 1959 and 1960 seasons has a Red Raider men's golf team participated in back-to-back NCAA Championships - until now. Texas Tech completed the first of two practice rounds in anticipating of Wednesday's first round of the 2007 tournament at Golden Horseshoe Golf Course in Williamsburg, Va.
"The guys are loose and seem to feel comfortable with the course," Texas Tech Head Coach Greg Sands said. "The course is a great layout, but I expect scores this week to be under par. The guys are hitting it well out of the rough; although our goal is to hit every fairway, which doesn't always happen."
Overall under Sands, the Red Raider program has participated in six-straight NCAA regionals and three NCAA championships. Tech begins play at the 2007 NCAA Championships on Wed., May 30, followed by rounds each day through June 2. The field will be cut following Friday's third round.
Texas Tech's steady lineup of senior All-American Oscar Floren, sophomores Santiago Rivas and Garrett Merrell and freshmen Will Griffin and Matt Smith has been steady through the latter portion of the season. The quintet finished seventh at the NCAA Central Regional in Sugar Grove, Ill., posting final rounds of 291 and 301, after opening the event with a 315. The group has represented Tech in the last five events, posting top 10 finishes in each, including a school-best third-place showing at the Big 12 Championships.
THE COURSE The 2007 NCAA Championships will be contested at the Golden Horseshoe Golf Club in Williamsburg, Va. Opened in 1963 and the work of Robert Trent Jones Sr., who called it his "finest design," the course is considered one of the best examples of traditional golf course architecture in the world. A complete course and hole-by-hole description can be found on www.goldenhorseshoegolf.com. The layout for this year's championship is par 70 and 6,803 yards.
THE NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS FIELD Thirty teams and six individuals will battle at the 2007 NCAA Championships, with three Big 12 teams included in the field. Texas Tech enters with the 24th seed, while Oklahoma State is 11th and Texas 29th. Each of the teams are ranked in the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index's top 50, while 21 are listed on the April 25th Golf World/NIKE Golf Coaches Poll. Top-seeded Georgia is ranked first on both the Golfweek/Sagarin and Golfworld/NIKE polls.
TECH'S NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS HISTORY Texas Tech's NCAA history began in 1956 with the program's first venture to the national event. The Red Raiders finished in a tie for 10th that year in the two-round event in Columbus, Ohio. Tech followed with a seventh-place tie in 1959 in Eugene, Ore., and a 28th-place showing the following year. Those two tournaments were the only back-to-back for the Red Raiders until now. The Red Raiders finished 15th in 1976, before making their first appearance under current head coach Greg Sands in 2002. Texas Tech made its sixth tournament trip last year.
 Texas Tech honored the memory of former Duke Head Coach Rod Myers who lost a battle to cancer.  | |
"We are using this as a salute to Rod. I didn't know him too well, but we got to play with him quite a bit. He was a class act and definitely a friend of many. I think the whole coaching community never uttered one ill word about Rod Myers. This is a tribute to him and what he did for college golf."
TEE PARTNERS Texas Tech tees off at 7:47 a.m. ET Wednesday and is grouped with Arizona and Charlotte for the first two rounds. The Red Raiders and the Wildcats were grouped together for one round during the National Invitational Tournament, hosted by Arizona, earlier in the spring.
Players Mentioned
