With a new format for the NCAA Men's Golf Championships, Wake Forest is also sporting a new attitude.
Not many gave the under-the-radar Deacons a chance to make it to the NCAA Championship this season, but they grinded out a fifth-place finish in the Northeast Regional to advance to today's 30-team championship.
The NCAA Championships will be held at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.
The format, which used to be 72 holes of stroke play, now has 54 holes of stroke play to determine the top eight teams. Those eight teams will then compete in match play to determine the team champion, something that hasn't been done since the 1964 championship. The individual champion will be determined after 54 holes.
Getting to be one of those final eight teams won't be easy, but the way that Coach Jerry Haas of the Deacons sees it, his team is capable. The Deacs, who are ranked 26th by Golfweek, don't have a top-ranked player but the team chemistry has been evident all season.
"I don't want to belabor that fact," Haas said about his team, which lost Webb Simpson off last year's team to graduation. "But I am proud of these guys for all they've done in getting to the NCAAs. We made some mistakes in New Jersey (at the regional) but we made it through, so that's a good sign."
Dustin Groves, leads the Deacons in stroke average at 72.6 and is the only senior on the team. Groves, along with junior Brendan Gielow, led the way at the regional as the Deacons tied for seventh. Junior Travis Wadkins, along with freshmen Daniel Meggs and Lee Bedford, also stepped up during the latter part of the season to contribute. Gielow averages a second-best 72.7 and Bedford, Wadkins and Meggs are all averaging 74 strokes a round this season.
"It's funny, but when the regional started Daniel Meggs said something about the road to the NCAAs starts here," Groves said. "So we have kind of been running with that and talking about that. We have three days to see if we can be one of the top eight teams, and our mind-set is we can do it."
Just as they did for the regional in New Jersey, the Deacons, with Haas doing the driving, took the scenic route to Toledo in the team van. It's about an 11-hour drive from Winston-Salem, but along the way the Deacons stopped to see one of Haas' old Wake Forest teammates, Bill Stines, and got in a good day of practice before arriving in Toledo yesterday.
Haas said that driving to the tournament was his decision, and it cut down on the hassle of airports and a rental van.
"I don't know, I just like it this way because we have our own van and are on our own schedule," Haas said.
Groves, who was in charge of the music and movies that the team watched on the way, said that plenty of team camaraderie stems from the trips to tournaments in the van.
"I talked with Webb last week and he says the thing he misses most about college golf is the van trips," Groves said about Simpson, who is a rookie on the PGA Tour.
Whether the Deacons can stick around until the conclusion of the match play remains to be the seen. The match play will begin on Friday with the championship matches scheduled for Saturday.
"Like Dustin said, nobody is really looking at us, but if we can put together three good rounds we can be right there," Haas said.
Groves and Gielow have played in the last two NCAA Championships, when the Deacons finished 22nd last season and 26th in 2007. Haas has gotten the Deacons to their fifth straight NCAA Championships and eighth in his 12 years as coach.
Groves likes the new format because if the Deacons can squeeze into the final eight anything can happen.
"This format brings a few more teams into it and we are one of those teams," Groves said. "You just never know in this game and if we can have a special three days we can be right there. There's really no pressure on us so we are in a good position where we can just go out and play."
■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or at jdell@wsjournal.com.
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