"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

May 16, 2006

Chattanooga golf coach Mark Guhne was talking with a candidate for the school’s vacant athletic director job the other day when the subject of international players came up.

Noticing that Guhne had one Englishman on his roster and a freshman from Sweden on the way for next season, the prospective AD asked Guhne if he enjoyed recruiting overseas.

Guhne didn’t fall down laughing at that one. Instead, he patiently explained how he runs his program on a budget that would have to go a ways just to be called shoestring. Part of his modus operandi, Guhne said, was sleeping in his truck on recruiting trips. Guhne didn’t mention this, but if McDonald’s offered the equivalent of frequent flyer miles, he would have built up enough points to have his breakfast burritos and Big Macs comped for the next decade or so.

So no, Guhne doesn’t jet off to London or Stockholm to find players. When you’re running a program on $10,000, or roughly what Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer earns in two days, you have to be just a bit more economical than that.

You also have to be crafty and resourceful just to survive, let alone thrive.

The above preamble brings us to what Guhne has accomplished in his first year as head coach, after a couple of seasons understudying former coach Reid Sanderlin, and offers some telling perspective. Consider what has happened to Guhne’s program in just the last week.

On Monday, the young Mocs, who start three freshmen, a sophomore and junior Bryce Ledford, finished third in the Linger Longer Invitational, behind only No. 1 ranked Georgia and No. 20 Charlotte, and ahead of No. 15 North Carolina and No. 30 Florida State. Ledford finished third individually.

Still stoked from that accomplishment, three of the Mocs, along with red-shirt Tyler Neff, drove straight to the Tennessee Open at the treacherous Golf Club of Tennessee because Guhne “strongly encourages” them to play a competitive summer schedule. The final scoreboard there speaks volumes about the talent Guhne has assembled by sleeping in his car, keeping good local players at home and choosing his friends from across the pond wisely. Junior Mitch Brock, who shot a pair of 69s and shared the first-round lead, and freshman Jonathan Hodge finished tied for third among amateurs and sixth overall. Ledford finished 21^st after a poor start. Neff tied for 45^th despite a second-round 77.

Keep in mind this was no hometown invitational where the Mocs were roughing up a bunch of local hackers. The field was comprised of the best amateurs and club professionals in Tennessee.

“It’s been an incredible week,” said Guhne, who was chosen the Southern Conference coach of the year as a rookie after leading the Mocs to a third-place finish in the conference, their best since 1993. “Incredible.”

Guhne didn’t mean that. The dictionary tells us that incredible means “impossible or difficult to believe.” After the week—and the season—they just finished, the Mocs are starting to believe they can beat any team in the country.

Whether that’s true right now is irrelevant. In the years ahead, the Mocs are finally going to get that chance.

In his first year, Guhne has done an amazing job of program building. He’s rallied support among the local golf community, raised money, networked with upper-level Division I coaches to try and squeeze his team into more prestigious events.

Next season, The Honors Course has agreed to play host to a tournament that has attracted several upper-level Division I programs. That in turn will get the Mocs invited to better tournaments, which will increase their strength of schedule and, if they keep playing as well as they have recently, propel them up the rankings.

The building blocks for the Mocs’ entry into the world of big-time college golf were set three years ago, when Guhne, than an assistant coach with no previous experience, talked Ledford and Brock into joining the program. The next year, Guhne convinced Gordon Strother, the Georgia AAAAA champion, to come to Chattanooga.

Last year he went to Jefferson City, Tenn. for Hodge, who despite winning the state high school and junior championships wasn’t heavily recruited by major programs. Whoops. This season Hodge earned All-SoCon honors. And then there was that 72-71-71 showing in the state open on a course than was harder than geometry.

In the same recruiting class, Guhne landed local star Tripp Harris to continue a trend of keeping some of Chattanooga’s best young talent in the city. He also trusted the judgment of former UTC player Neil Connolly, who lives in London and told Guhne about Ben Rickett, a talented Englishman who hits the ball nine miles off the tee. Rickett was fourth on the team in scoring and had a fifth-place finish this season.

Golfstat, which tracks college golf statistics, keeps a Freshman Class Impact Ranking. The Mocs’ rookies ranked ninth in the country with a stroke average of 74.92, just below classes from traditional powers Oklahoma State, Florida and Georgia Tech.

The talent transfusion continues. Guhne has already signed Chattanooga’s Derek Rende, rated the No. 1 junior in the state. Taking a tip from UTC women’s coach Colette Murray, a native of Scotland who knows several international coaches, Guhne signed Frederick Qvicker from Sweden. Here’s how good Qvicker is: Earlier this week, jetlagged after the long trip from his native country and with no sleep, Qvicker joined a couple of his new teammates for a round at Council Fire, which of course he’d never even seen, let alone played. He shot 31 on the front.

Guhne won’t stop there. With plans to blanket Tennessee with his recruiting dragnet and to continue to trust his growing international connections, Guhne will keep signing good players. He’s got a lot more to offer these days as donations continue to roll in. The program was recently given 15 acres of land on which a practice facility will be built. All the good local courses—and Chattanooga has as many per capita as nearly any mid- to large city in the country—have opened their doors to the Mocs so they can practice and play. Buzz is building about this program.

“Now that we’ve proven we can play with the big guys, there’s a lot more interest in what’s going on at UTC,” Guhne said. “We’ve had kids from major schools call and look at transferring. But I’m very happy with guys I’ve got now. These kids can compete with anybody in the country. We’re starting to prove that.”

*** Feedback ***
click here to give me your comments about this article,
 or suggest a subject for a future article