Spartans Open Season At Springhill Suites Intercollegiate
9/12/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Men's Golf Release in PDF format
Spartanburg, S.C. - USC Upstate head coach Todd
Lawton is set to open his sixth season as head coach of the men's
program when the Spartans tee off in the Springhill Suites
Intercollegiate at the Country Club of South Carolina Monday
morning. When he takes his team to the course, it will be the first
with no players connected with the 2006-07 team that finished
second by one stroke in the NCAA Division II National
Championships.
While Lawton has had the benefit of experience on every team he
has coached at Upstate, he will begin the season with a squad that
has not seen a tremendous amount of experience on the collegiate
level, but comes in with a bevy of talent. Only one player in this
year's lineup, Tyler
Comer, played in last year's Springhill Suites Intercollegiate.
Lawton will send the five-player lineup of Brad
Sill, Matthew
Hopper, Will
Graves, Danny
Brock and Comer into tournament action. Comer shot rounds of
74, 76 and 76 last year to help the Spartan cause.
The Springhill Suites Intercollegiate will be played on the
7,062-yard, par-72 Country Club of South Carolina. The tournament
will be played over 54 holes, with 36 on Monday and 18 on Tuesday.
Georgia Southern won last year's championship with a 17-under-par
score. Upstate, which maintained a position just outside of the top
five through the first two rounds, struggled in the final round and
finished 11th in the 15-team tournament. Josh Gallman led the
Upstate cause, firing a 3-under-par 213 total to finish in a tie
for ninth.
The field for the tournament will consist of 15 teams. Schools
from, the A-Sun, Big South, Ohio Valley and Southern conferences,
as well as two top teams in Division II, will play for the
tournament championship. Defending champion Georgia Southern is
back to defend its title. Upstate is the only A-Sun school in the
tournament.
To say that the 2010-11 season represents a new beginning for
Lawton and the men's golf program is an understatement. In the last
two years, Lawton has seen the entire core of the foundation of
Upstate's program graduate, including Gallman and Michael Lawrence
off of last year's team. Gallman is the top golfer in the history
of the program and finished his career with seven individual
tournament wins, while Lawrence was a strong player in the lineup
for four seasons, winning two individual titles on the Division I
level. Of the five returning lettermen on this year's team, only
Hopper and Brian
Horton, not in the lineup this week, have seen significant
action in more than half of the tournaments played last season.
Horton suited up for 10 of Upstate's 11 tournaments last year and
shared the individual championship with Gallman at the Palmas Del
Mar Collegiate Classic. Hopper played in seven tournaments, while
Comer saw action in five events. McKenzie Oref and Bryan
Otis played in four tournaments a year ago.
Newbies Set To Take Course At Springhill
Suites
With six newcomers on the roster, head coach Todd Lawton knew that
the lineup would consist of new faces. Qualifying for a spot in the
lineup for the Springhill Suites Intercollegiate was fierce, but
after all was said and done, three of the newcomers secured spots
in the season-opening tournament. Brad Sill, a sophomore from
Spartanburg who began his career at Winthrop before transferring to
Upstate this year, qualified in the No. 1 position. He had a
tremendous prep career in leading the Dorman High School squad that
was traditionally one of the top programs in the state and saw
significant action at Winthrop a year ago. WIll Graves, a freshman
from Rock Hill, S.C., was a three-time team Most Valuable Player at
South Pointe High School and qualified in the third position for
the Spartans. Danny Brock, a freshman from Simpsonville, S.C.,
qualified fourth for the Spartans. He led Hillcrest High School to
back-to-back appearances in the 4A state tournament and was a
three-time all-region selection.
South Carolina Products Have Built Program At
Upstate
The state of South Carolina is one of the premier locations for
recreational golf in all of the U.S. It also produces a strong crop
of college golfers. Upstate head coach Todd Lawton has built the
program on talent from the Palmetto state. Beginning with the core
of Baxter Culler, Jamie Lightsey and Tyler Tucker and continuing
with Josh Gallman and Michael Lawrence, the foundation of the
program was established with players from the state. Currently, 10
of the 12 players on this year's team hail from South Carolina,
including all five players in the lineup for this week's
tournament.
Looking For Balance
While Upstate relied heavily on the efforts of both Josh Gallman
and Michael Lawrence to shoot low scores for the better part of the
last three years, head coach Todd Lawton expects a more balanced
attack this season. Last year, Upstate was hampered by scores in
the upper 70's out of the No. 4 and No. 5 positions. Those scores
were offset by the efforts of Gallman and Lawrence. While Lawton
doesn't expect to see scores of 66 and 67 regularly this season, he
also feels confident that with the depth on the team, the scores
out of the No. 4 and No. 5 positions will be consistently lower. If
that comes to fruition, the Spartans should be even more
competitive than last year's team.
