At the University of Denver, golf no longer is something hockey players do during the summer to keep their slap shots sharp.
For the third straight year, the Pioneers’ golf team is competing in the NCAA West Regional.
Starting today at the Stanford Golf Course in Palo Alto, Calif., DU will compete with 26 other teams. The tournament is played over 54 holes, with the top 10 teams and two individuals not on advancing teams qualifying for the NCAA championships scheduled for June 1-4 at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Md.
Seeded No. 22 in the regional, DU is no threat to win a national championship, much less match the back-to-back titles won by the hockey team.
But for a school that shelved golf from 1971-86 and was thinking about dropping it again before moving up to Division I seven years ago, this is more than a nice little run of regionals.
If you ask sophomore Charlie Soule of Longmont, the No. 1 player on the team with a 71.94 stroke average, it’s more like a standard this year’s Pioneers haven’t yet measured up to.
“There’s three of us – myself, James Love (a junior from Calgary, Alberta, at 72.35) and Jimmy Cunningham (a senior from Walkersville, Md., at 73.0) – we’re all pretty solid players,” Soule said. “So basically what we’re looking for is continued solid play out of us and good production from our four and five guys. If that happens, I think we’ve got a pretty good shot at making it to the nationals.
“Actually, I think we’ve underachieved a little bit. We really expected a lot more to happen. Getting to the regionals again was more of an expectation than a surprise.”
A walk-on at DU, Soule is the only local player on the Pioneers’ roster.
He made the team on determination, which coach Eric Hoos , a former touring pro from Boulder (Fairview High School), will tell you is also his best asset on the course.
“Actually his first year, his freshman year, he tried to walk on and I cut him,” Hoos said. “His second year, he walked on and played some good tournaments for us, and this year he’s been our best player.
“He’s worked hard on his swing and he hits the ball more consistently. But I think his biggest strength is his mental tenacity; he’s real tough mentally. He’s a real good thinker on the golf course. He’s got very good visualization skills, and he doesn’t let a bad shot carry on to the next swing.”
Soule, a psychology major, agrees.
“I think once you reach a certain point, just about everybody out here has the same physical skills,” he said. “So the mental aspect plays a big part in it.”
In his sixth season as coach, Hoos said the Pioneers’ program is “on the upswing,” mostly a result of the generosity of the late Ron Moore.
Moore, a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, was a star golfer for DU in the early 1950s and a dominant amateur in the state for more than two decades. He later became a prominent local banker. When DU considered dropping golf again in the late 1990s, Moore funded an endowment for the program.
“We’ve just been fortunate to be able to recruit some of the right players because of the wonderful support of the Moore family,” Hoos said.
Denver’s best finish at an NCAA regional was in its first appearance in 2003, when the Pioneers tied for 15th. Also that season, senior Tony Giarratano became the first DU golfer to qualify for the NCAA nationals when he finished tied for eighth in the individual standings.
Joseph Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-5458 or jsanchez@denverpost.com.
