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Mary Hardin-Baylor’s winning lineup at the Golfweek October Classic offers a window into how deep this team really is. Three freshmen traveled to Sandestin Resort in Destin, Florida, while three of the players who helped the team win last spring’s American Southwest Conference title, and thus the automatic qualifying spot into the national championship, stayed at home.
“It’s such a deep team and they all wanted that,” head coach Jordan Cox said of that competitive dynamic. “They all wanted to be part of a team where they were going to have to really work to be in the lineup. They knew it was going to make them as individual players better and they knew they wanted to be on a team like that.”
Mary Hardin-Baylor went 7 over in the opening round of the Golfweek October Classic but clawed its way from fourth to first over the next 36 holes. The Crusaders ended the week at 5 under and with a four-shot victory over Wittenberg, which also claimed the individual medalist in Mitch Bolte (7 under). Both teams put together an 11-under round on the final day, with birdies flying on a setup that Cox said wasn’t easy by any means.
“Our guys are young,” Cox said. “They fight and they claw, they just don’t give up.”
Every coach is cautiously optimistic about the level of talent they’re bringing in with each recruiting class, and Cox is no different with the group he brought to Sandestin. Winning in a loaded field left Cox searching for the right words.
“We respect the people who are playing so much and to be able to come out on top of that,” he said. “That’s a great finish anytime, but to conclude our fall schedule with it is just the cherry on top.”
Mary Hardin-Baylor took only one head-to-head loss this fall season: to a hard-charging Rhodes team that won the West Pines Invitational on Oct. 7. The Crusaders won all three of the other events they played. Trace some of that success back to what’s going on at Mary Hardin-Baylor’s Belton, Texas, campus. All of a sudden, college golf has a little bit of a “Lost Boys” feel thanks to a new multi-million dollar golf facility that officially comes online this week.
The whole Crusader experience has changed, and the results are already proving it.
When the ribbon is cut on the Jane and Mac Hickerson Crusader Golf Club on Oct. 17, the Mary Hardin-Baylor men might still be on a high from their Golfweek October Classic win three days earlier.
“I know they’re exhausted,” head coach Jordan Cox said, “but what a great way to be exhausted.”
This new facility includes a four-hole practice course with 23 tee boxes, a lighted short game area with two bunkers, a clubhouse and a hitting bay area with two Trackman units and a SAM PuttLab. Ben Crenshaw and Earl Santee, a well-known sports venue architect, designed the facility, named after Mac Hickerson, the first golf coach at Mary Hardin-Baylor.
Cox said players have had access to parts of the golf facility for a little over a year, but this semester marks the first time they’ve been able to use the clubhouse facilities and hitting bays.
“I think these guys, and our girls too, for that matter, they have just really embraced the opportunity and the blessing that that facility is and just used it like crazy and it has really, really helped us,” said Cox, who is still pinching himself over it.
Last spring, Mary Hardin-Baylor would have been left out of the national championship had the Crusaders not edged LeTourneau to win the conference title and the automatic qualifying spot into the postseason.
“I feel like it was because of short game and that’s because those kids are out there working on it all the time,” Cox said, specifically noting the lighted short-game holes. “You have to say, ‘Hey you gotta turn the lights off at 11. It’s good to go back to the dorm, you have to study now, you have to get something to eat.’ That’s a coach’s dream.”
But it’s every bit a college golfer’s dream, too.
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