SoCon Men's Golf Championship page

GREENSBORO, Ga. – The 2021 Southern Conference Men’s Golf Championship will be played Monday and Tuesday at The Oconee Course at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Greensboro, Georgia. This will be the first year the tournament will be played at the par-72, 7,393-yard Rees Jones-designed course.
 
This season’s tournament will feature 54 holes over the two days, starting with two rounds on Monday before wrapping up with Tuesday’s final round.
 
The league’s eight teams – ETSU, Furman, Mercer, UNC Greensboro, Samford, Chattanooga, Western Carolina and Wofford – will be competing for the SoCon tournament 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.
 
UNCG has won two straight SoCon tournaments, breaking through for its first win in 2018 after three straight runner-up finishes and adding a second title in 2019. The 2020 championship had been scheduled to take place at Reynolds Lake Oconee but was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
 
ETSU senior Shiso Go is the defending individual champion, as he finished regulation play in 2019 tied with UNCG’s Nick Lyerly at 11-under-par 205 and downed Lyerly in a sudden-death playoff for medalist honors.
 
UNCG had four top-10 finishers in 2019, while Chattanooga had three en route to a third-place team finish behind UNCG and ETSU. The Spartans were the lone team to finish under par as a team, posting an 11-under 853 over 54 holes.
 
ETSU enters the 2021 tournament as the top-ranked SoCon team, as the Bucs are 50^th in the Golfstat rankings, followed by Furman at No. 81. Chattanooga is No. 131, and UNCG No. 138 and Wofford No. 140 as the league boasts five teams in the top 150 nationally.
 
ETSU owns 20 SoCon team titles, while Furman has 13 and Chattanooga has six to its credit. ETSU won three straight titles from 2015 to 2017, Furman’s last was in 2010 and Chattanooga claimed consecutive titles in 2012 and 2013.
 
ETSU has a league-best 15 individual medalists to its credit, followed closely by Furman with 14. Western Carolina has five, and UNCG, Chattanooga and Wofford claim two each.
 
Furman’s Keller Harper enters the tournament leading the league with a 70.78 stroke average this season. He is ranked No. 111 nationally.
 
Six SoCon golfers have won tournaments this season, including Harper (Pinnacle Bank Intercollegiate at Palmetto Hall, Furman Intercollegiate), Mercer’s Tyler Copp (Invitational at Savannah Harbor) and Jonathan Parker (Intercollegiate at The Grove), Chattanooga’s A.J. Lintunen (J.T. Poston Invitational, Sea Palms Invitational), UNCG’s Tommy Lamb (Ross Collegiate Classic) and Wofford’s Ryan Marter (Wofford Invitational).
 
The Southern Conference Men’s Golf Championship boasts a rich history. Dating back to 1930, 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 Stephan Jaeger of Chattanooga (2012), J.T. Poston of Western Carolina (2014 and 2015) and William McGirt of Wofford (2001).
 
The tournament tees off with twosomes at 9 a.m. Monday. Tuesday’s final round will tee off at 8:30 a.m. Live stats can be found here.