Clemson Golf Outlook 1998

Feb. 20, 1998

The 1997 Fall golf campaign had to be a disheartening season for many Clemson golf opponents. The Tigers had lost one of their all-time greats in Richard Coughlan, who had earned a spot on the PGA Tour just a couple of months after his graduation. Surely, Clemson would drop a notch with Coughlan out of the lineup.

But, if the results in the first six tournaments of the 1997-98 academic year are any indication, Clemson figures to once again be in the national championship hunt. The team had a 71.93 stroke average, best ever for the fall aspect of competition and ahead of the record pace for a season, (72.61 in 1988-89) a team that featured All-Americans Kevin Johnson and Chris Patton.

The first half of this year saw Clemson win the Jerry Pate Intercollegiate, the first time Clemson has won that event, plus second-place finishes at the Palmetto Classic, the Rolex Match Play and the Mauna Kea Collegiate. Three times Clemson bettered the 280 team mark for a single round, including an all-time record 273 at the second round of the Palmetto Classic. The first round at the Mauna Kea in Hawaii saw Clemson place four players in the sixties, another first in Clemson history for a single day’s work.