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SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The 2017 Southern Conference Men’s Golf Championship will be played Sunday through Tuesday at Pinehurst No. 9 in Pinehurst, North Carolina. This will be the fourth straight year the tournament is played at the par-72, 7,118-yard Jack Nicklaus Signature course.
This year’s event will be the 10th SoCon Championship played in Pinehurst. The event was also held in Pinehurst in 1937, 1939, 1948, 1969 and 1979-80, all on famed No. 2.
Eight SoCon teams – ETSU, Furman, Mercer, UNCG, Samford, Chattanooga, Western Carolina and Wofford – will be competing for the league title and an automatic bid to the NCAA regionals. The individual medalist will also earn an automatic regional qualification if he is not on the winning team.
ETSU won its record 19th SoCon title in 2016, edging runner-up UNCG by a single stroke. The Bucs, who put three players in the top 10 last year, including medalist and two-time SoCon Player of the Year Adrian Meronk, should be in contention again this year despite the loss of Meronk and Gudmundur Kristjansson (t-10th). ETSU does return senior Mateusz Gradecki, who tied for fifth last year and enters the tournament second in the league in stroke average this season (71.69) and ranked No. 147 by GolfStat.
ETSU, which won the 2015 tournament in a playoff with UNCG, will face stiff competition again this year. Chattanooga is the top-ranked team in the league this year, as the Mocs are 93rd in the latest GolfStat rankings and own a team stroke average of 290.77. UNCG, trying to break through for its first SoCon title after consecutive runner-up finishes, owns the SoCon’s best team stroke average this year (289.07) and is ranked No. 100 nationally. The Bucs (110) and Wofford (144) give the league four teams in the top 150.
Among active league members, Furman owns 13 SoCon titles, its last coming in 2010, while Chattanooga is the only other current member to boast a title, as the Mocs have six to their credit, most recently in 2012 and 2013.
With Meronk’s departure, a new individual medalist will be crowned in 2017. Among the favorites will be Wofford’s Andrew Novak, the league’s top-ranked player at No. 89 nationally and the SoCon leader in stroke average at 70.86. Novak has posted eight top-10 finishes in 10 starts this academic year, winning a pair of fall tournaments and tying for second at the Furman Intercollegiate with Chattanooga’s Wes Gosselin this spring.
Gosselin should also be a factor in the individual race, as the Mocs’ redshirt senior is third in the league in scoring behind Novak and Gradecki at 72.07. He, too, boasts a win this year, as he claimed the spring-opening Mobile Sports Authority Intercollegiate. In all, 10 league players own stroke averages under 73.00.
Seven players that finished in the top 10 at last year’s SoCon Championship are in the 2017 field. Furman’s Bryce Howell and Wofford’s Jeremy Grab tied for runner-up honors last year, while Western Carolina’s Mark David Johnson tied Gradecki for fifth. Novak and UNCG’s Josh Stockwell tied for seventh, while Gosselin tied for 10th.
The Southern Conference Men’s Golf Championship boasts a rich history. Dating back to 1933, the tournament has produced winners such as Wake Forest’s Arnold Palmer (1948 and 1949) and Furman’s Brad Faxon (1983), both SoCon Hall-of-Famers, and current PGA TOUR pros J.T. Poston of Western Carolina (2014 and 2015) and William McGirt of Wofford (2001).
The tournament tees off with twosomes at 7:30 a.m. Sunday.
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