Certain sports at California Baptist University are more fast paced compared to other sports; however, despite their hard work and dedication to representing CBU at the highest level of NCAA competition, men’s golf requires greater patience.
Despite the seeming lack of action in the sport of collegiate golf, the golfers and coaches at CBU put in tremendous amounts of time and energy into working to compete at the highest level.
“There is often a misconception about golf that we don’t do much and just sit in a golf cart all day,” said John Hayes, junior marketing major and member of the men’s golf team. “Most of the time we are actually walking when we play and can walk almost 15 miles in a day during a tournament. We have long weeks of traveling and practice just to prepare for the event and have some days where we start playing at 7 a.m. and don’t finish for over 12 hours. It’s a lot of work, but we all love it.”
Kaylea Snapp, freshman elementary education major, shared her first impression about men’s golf at CBU.
“My first impression of college golf is that there aren’t really that many people that watch the sport,” Snapp said. “The reasoning is because there isn’t that much action that happens in golf.”
Golf requires tremendous amounts of coordination, skill and concentration. Especially when competing at the elite NCAA Division I level, the CBU men’s golf team works to be the best team around.
“To play college golf it takes years of playing competitively and learning to reflect on failure,” said Travis Brown, head golf coach. “There are so many skill sets that one must master to become successful in playing the game of golf. It is very difficult to separate yourself as a student-athlete from the thousands who play college golf each year.”
Golf at the collegiate level is different than professional or high-school level golfing competitions. While golf is considered an individual sport, golf in college is centered around team performance—the golfers at CBU are not golfing for themselves, but their team and their school.
“People often ask things like when our season is or if we play specific schools against each other,” said Hayes. “We actually play the entire year almost nonstop with tournaments and practice during both fall and spring semester. In college, we actually play tournaments where there are upwards of 15 plus teams we are competing against. We send five players and all try to play as well as we can. The winner is determined by who can shoot the lowest as a team, not just seeing if one team can beat another.”
CBU men’s golf works year-round to compete at the highest level of collegiate golfing competition. Despite common misconceptions about golf, golfers at CBU compete in a highly active and strenuous competition format that also requires concentration and coordination. CBU athletes are still training with hopes to compete this fall.
