By Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
Professional golfers travel a lot so it’s no surprise that Chan Song has been all over the place - some might say halfway to Hades and only part of the way back - chasing his dream.
Song could use a break in his pursuit, and you can tune into, “Big Break Greenbrier,” this fall to see if the former Georgia Tech linkster gets one.
By Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
Few can swing a conversation from walk-in-the-park status to a top fuel drag race as quickly as Bruce Heppler, and Georgia Tech’s golf coach did it again the other day.
He had cause.
Classes began Monday, his assistant coach has left the program somewhat unexpectedly, the Yellow Jackets will begin qualifying today for the first of their four big fall tournaments, and Heppler’s monster fund-raiser is rising on the horizon like Pike’s Peak - near Christian Newton’s new home as head coach at Colorado State.
By Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
THE FLATS - Surely, you’ll excuse Bruce Heppler if he experienced something of a proud papa moment this weekend even as those emotions weren’t tied to his kids.
Georgia Tech’s golf coach has sent quite a few athletes out into the professional ranks, but he’s also sent young men into the real world. That’s both the same thing and something different, it’s also more important and it has plenty to do with Heppler’s pride.
Former and present Yellow Jackets had a heck of a week on links around the world, enough to where Heppler was nearly upside down trying to track them.
By Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
It wasn’t scheduled to be a vacation, per se, but Seth Reeves’ trip out west has sort of come to feel that way and you know what? Although he’s not one to relax, he’ll take it.
Golf hasn’t been so kind to Reeves this summer, and his trip to Utah was meant to do something about that.
That part is going well. Georgia Tech’s rising red-shirt junior carded a two-under par 69 Tuesday in the second round of the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship to qualify for the 64-man match play beginning Wednesday and - hopefully - ending next Monday at the Soldier Hollow Golf Course in Wasatch State Park.
By Jon Cooper
Sting Daily
Left to their own devices, college students can be unpredictable, to say the least, and difficult to track down, especially during the summer.
The members of the Georgia Tech golf team are proving to be an unpredictable bunch, as there’s no telling where they’re going to pop up, but they’re not hard to track down.
Just look for a city or town in the United States with a major amateur golf event and chances are you’re going to find a Yellow Jacket. (Jackets fans also can follow James White, who is in Scotland, playing in the British Amateur Championship and the Palmer Cup by clicking here).
by William Bretherton
wbretherton@cherokeetribune.com
Standing 5-foot-9 and 147 pounds, Anders Albertson doesn’t tower over anyone.
The Georgia Tech freshman golfer’s drives were initially coming up a little short, but, much like other aspects of his game, his distance improved after working with swing coach Jeff Patton.
“Anders has learned to rotate his core extremely quick and can apply the club face very square to the ball,” Patton said of the former Etowah High School standout. “I would say his driver can now approach 300 yards. He probably averages in the mid-to-high 280s. He’s not done yet. That’s the fun part. He’s still working on it.”
By Matt Winklejohn
Sting Daily
It’s not purgatory where James White lingers because there are no religious connotations, but the recently graduated Georgia Tech golfer’s soul is in limbo.
He’s a bit stuck between remaining an amateur and turning pro. He has a couple residences - neither of which he can really call home. And now that school is over for good, he has this gnawing feeling that since nearly all he’s done is practice, practice, practice that he might play so much that it could become counter-productive.
Today, he’ll try to put all the doubts in the rear view.
By Steve Hummer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The sky was leaden and weepy, warning away the casual golfer.
But playing golf for Georgia Tech is not a casual thing.
A little rain didn’t shoo the Yellow Jackets away from the Golf Club of Georgia on Wednesday as they prepared for an NCAA regional tournament date. They have a long, proud tradition of playing through the elements.
While at Tech, the world’s 16th-ranked pro, Matt Kuchar, used to get his khakis in a bunch whenever coach Bruce Heppler dragged the team outdoors on freezing winter days for a practice round. Then he’d get even, sneaking into Heppler’s office while the coach was away and turning the thermostat way down so he’d have to work in the cold.
By Ken Sugiura
AJC
Thursday begins probably the biggest weekend of the academic year for Georgia Tech athletics. The women’s tennis team will play Cal at 9 a.m. at the University of Georgia in the Sweet 16. It’s the seventh time in the past eight years that Tech has reached the final 16.
The golf team begins NCAA regional tournament play at Oklahoma, hoping to advance through to the NCAA championships. The Jackets are the No. 2 seed in the Southwest regional. Beginning in 1989, when the NCAA instituted the regional format, Tech has made the regional round 21 out of 23 years and advanced to the national tournament 20 of those times.
Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
Bruce Heppler’s been at this a good long while, but he’s never done it this way: he’s splitting his travel squad on the way to NCAA Regionals next week.
In 15 previous seasons as Georgia Tech’s head golf coach, Heppler’s always packed his entire squad, himself and his assistant coach on the same plane for travel, but the team’s two freshmen – Anders Albertson and Ollie Schniederjens – will not make the trip to Oklahoma Monday when the rest of the Yellow Jackets depart.
They’re going to stay behind, and Heppler will as well, for a pretty darned good reason: Schniederjens and Albertson are going to play in a U.S. Open sectional qualifier Monday at the Marietta Country Club. On Tuesday morning, they’ll head west.
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