Bulldogs Seeking Third National Championship

ATHENS, Ga. --- The Georgia men's golf team will begin its quest for the program's third national title on Friday in the NCAA Championships.

The No. 14 Bulldogs, recent winners of the NCAA Athens Regional, will be joined by 29 other squads and six individuals at the par-72, 7,550-yard Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.

Team and individual stroke play will take place Friday through Monday, with the top eight squads after 72 holes qualifying for match play. The match play quarterfinals and semifinals are slated for Tuesday and the championship match is scheduled for Wednesday.

Georgia coach Chris Haack is completing his 23rd season with the Bulldogs, and this will be his 19th squad in the final tournament. Haack led the Bulldogs to the 1999 and 2005 national titles, to runner-up finishes in 2007 and 2011, and to the national semifinals in 2015. The Bulldogs are back in the NCAAs field after a two-year absence.

"It feels great to be back in the NCAAs," Haack said. "I gained a greater appreciation for the event and the competition that it provides as we sat out and could only watch it on TV. This is a place where Georgia should be every year. Being in the hunt for a national championship each season is at the top of our list. And even though we have a green team, they know what's at stake. This is an amazing opportunity, and I would love nothing more than to add 2019 to our list of national champs. We've been playing solid golf, and if we can keep that up, good things can happen. We will take it round by round and do all we can to get to match play and then see what happens. This is the most important tournament of the season, and I can tell that our players are dialed in."

The Bulldogs will tee off on Friday in 11-minute increments between 3 and 3:44 p.m. EDT and on Saturday between 9:40 and 10:24 a.m. EDT. Georgia will be paired with Clemson and BYU in the first two rounds. Sunday's pairings will be determined by the 36-hole results. Following Sunday's round, the field will be cut to the low 15 teams for Monday's final stroke play loop.

The Bulldogs will use a lineup of juniors Trevor Phillips and Spencer Ralston, sophomore Davis Thompson, and freshmen Will Kahlstorf and Trent Phillips. That quintet has won three times this spring -- the Puerto Rico Classic, the Linger Longer Invitational, and the NCAA Athens Regional. Ralston leads the Bulldogs with a scoring average of 70.12, followed by Trent Phillips (70.16), Thompson (70.61), Trevor Phillips (71.68), and Kahlstorf (73.48).

All five players will be making their first appearance in the NCAAs.

"We are all really looking forward to playing in the NCAAs for the first time," Ralston said. "We've built some momentum this spring, and we feel like we have a team that we can be excited about. We've played great all spring, winning in stretches. We've shown ourselves that we have the game to compete against the other top teams."

Joining the Bulldogs at the NCAAs will be No. 1 Oklahoma State, No. 2 Arizona State, No. 3 Wake Forest, No. 4 Vanderbilt, No. 5 Texas, No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 7 Georgia Tech, No. 8 Duke, No. 9 Southern Cal, No. 10 Stanford, No. 11 Auburn, No. 12 California, No. 13 Clemson, No. 15 BYU, No. 16 South Carolina, No. 17 LSU, No. 18 Texas A&M, No. 19 North Florida, No. 20 Pepperdine, No. 21 Louisville, No. 22 Liberty, No. 23 Baylor, No. 24 Illinois, No. 25 North Carolina, No. 26 TCU, No. 27 UNLV, No. 28 Ohio State, No. 29 Georgia Southern, and No. 30 SMU.

"It feels like we're peaking at the right time," Thompson said. "We saw flashes of it at the SECs and we finally put it all together at the Regional and won. It's important that we keep building off the momentum we had at the Regional. All five of us are playing well, and we're used looking forward to getting out there."

The Golf Channel will air live coverage from Monday's stroke-play final round at 4 p.m. EDT, Tuesday's match-play quarterfinals at 11 a.m. EDT, Tuesday's match-play semifinals at 4 p.m. EDT, and Wednesday's match-play finals at 4 p.m. EDT.

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Players Mentioned

Will Kahlstorf

Trent Phillips

Trevor Phillips

Spencer Ralston

Davis Thompson