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WVU Prepped for Big 12 Golf Championship
April 28, 2016 10:41 AM | Golf
TRINITY, Texas – The West Virginia University golf team is set to make history this weekend, as five Mountaineers will become the program’s first-ever participants in the 2016 Big 12 Golf Championship. This year’s event will take place April 29-May 1 at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity, Texas.
Max Sear, Easton Renwick, Chris Williams, Tristan Nicholls and Alan Cooke will represent WVU at the tournament.
Covich attended last year’s Big 12 Championship, though the Mountaineers were not eligible for competition.
“I was standing at Southern Hills, watching all these guys tee off from the Big 12,” said Covich. “Texas, Oklahoma State, Baylor… a few of those guys had played in major championships. Texas Tech had a guy that had played in the Masters. Texas had Beau Hossler, who was in contention at the U.S. Open. After watching all of those guys, I texted the five guys we had back here and said ‘We’ve got to get a lot better. If we’re going to compete in this league, we have to get better.’ This is the best of the best, and it’s a great opportunity. I definitely remember sending that message and I hope they remember getting it. It’s been almost 365 days now and our moment is about to be here.”
Teams will play 36 holes on Friday, followed by 18 holes on Saturday and Sunday. West Virginia enters the tournament as the No. 10 seed and will be paired with No. 9 Iowa State. The Mountaineers and the Cyclones will tee off from the first tee at 10:30 a.m. ET on Friday. First-day pairings are determined by Golfweek/Sagarin team rankings. Texas, this year’s host and the winner of the previous three Big 12 Championships, ranks No. 1 nationally and enters the tournament as the No. 1 seed. No. 6 Oklahoma State is the No. 2 seed, followed by third-seeded Oklahoma, who ranks 25th nationally. No. 5 seed Texas Tech, No. 6 Kansas, No. 7 TCU and No. 8 Kansas State round out the field.
Whispering Pines Golf Club, the biennial host of the Big 12 Championship, was voted the No. 1 Golf Course in Texas by Dallas Morning News and is also the biennial host of the Spirit International. The course follows a par-72, 7,473-yard layout.
The Mountaineers are coming off their best performance of the season as the squad set a new team low with a score of 853 for a second-place finish at Penn State’s Rutherford Intercollegiate on April 16-17. Alan Cooke set a new individual record for WVU, shooting six under par with a 207 to finish as the individual runner-up.
Sear, a freshman, enters this weekend as the team leader with a 73.68 stroke average and five top-20 finishes. Renwick, a redshirt senior, boasts four top-20 finishes and a 74.48 stroke average. Cooke has twice posted low rounds of 67 in tournament play and has recorded a 74.94 scoring average in nine tournaments.
Williams, one of two West Virginia natives on the roster, is coming off one of his best outings of the year as he tied his season low with a 223 at the Rutherford Intercollegiate. He’s posted an average score of 76.11 in ten tournaments. Nicholls, a freshman, has appeared in seven tournaments with a stroke average of 76.76. However, he’s made great strides this spring and has averaged 74.63 in his last three outings.
The WVU golf team is in the midst of its first varsity season in three decades. The sport was reintroduced in 2014 after being dropped following the 1982 season.
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