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    Men's Golf Earns NCAA Regional Bid As No. 7 Seed In College Station, Texas Regional boasts five teams ranked in Golfweek's top 25
    Cole Moreland


    Cole Moreland

    May 10, 2010

    Tourney Central

    AUBURN --The Auburn men's golf team earned a No. 7 seed in the 14-team NCAA College Station (Texas) Regional at the Traditions Club May 20-22. The College Station Regional is the only one of the six regionals to have five teams ranked in Golfweek's top 25.

    The top five teams and top individual not on those teams qualify for the 113th NCAA Men's Golf Championship at The Honors Course in Chattanooga, Tenn., June 1-6.

    No. 2 Texas A&M is the top seed followed by No. 13 Texas Tech, No. 12 Georgia, No. 22 North Florida and No. 21 TCU to round out the top five. Pepperdine is the sixth seed and Auburn seventh followed by North Carolina, Baylor, Tulsa, Rice, Wichita State, Georgetown and Jackson State.

    "We are excited to qualify for NCAA Regionals, and Texas A&M's golf course is a great course. We are looking forward to going there and seeing if we can get to the national championship," said Auburn first-year head coach Nick Clinard. "All the credit goes to the players. They really have listened, worked hard, have had a lot of good effort and a lot of good results. They are the ones who should be proud of themselves.

    "The new season starts now and regionals is the beginning of the end of the year, and it is the only tournament that matters moving forward. In order to compete for a national championship, you have to go in with the right mindset to advance from NCAA Regionals."

    Auburn is led by senior Cole Moreland, who has a 72.43 stroke average, sophomore All-SEC second-team selection Kyle Kopsick (72.67), sophomore Will McCurdy (73.06), sophomore John Stembridge (73.10) and freshman All-SEC selection David Zickler (73.43).

     

     

    The Tigers are making their 19th overall in the last 21 years as Clinard helped Auburn return to the postseason after missing out last year. This is only the second regional out of 19 that Auburn has played in west of the Mississippi River with the only other one coming in the 2005 NCAA West Regional in Stanford, Calif.

    "It is still golf as the golf ball is the same size and the hole is the same size," said Clinard. "It is a little different style of golf. It will probably be a little harder and faster, and it looks like a very good golf course based on some of the results from tournaments there that I have seen. It will be a good challenge for us, and it is a great field and may be one of the hardest regionals there is. If we go out there and play well, we will have a chance."

    Individuals in the College Station Regional include Oscar Zetterwall and Ken Looper, both of New Orleans, Louisiana-Lafayette's Phillipp Fendt, Sam Houston State's Scott Kelly and Grambling's Jason Coleman.

    Ten SEC teams qualified for the NCAA Regionals, including No. 12 Georgia and Auburn at Traditions Club in College Station, Texas; Arkansas and Ole Miss at the Capital City Club in Alpharetta, Ga.; No. 6 Florida and LSU at The Warren Golf Course in Notre Dame, Ind.; Tennessee at Carlton Oaks Golf Course in San Diego, Calif.; No. 15 South Carolina, Alabama and Vanderbilt at The Yale University Golf Course in New Haven, Conn.; while no SEC team is at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Wash.

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