Four years is long enough between Southern Conference championships for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s golf coach Mark Guhne.
His mocs will enter the Southern Conference tournament in a good position to change that.
Guhne will take his deepest-ever team to Pinehurst No. 9 in North Carolina for the three-day, 54-hole event that starts Sunday. The Mocs have the league’s top national ranking, No. 93 by Golfstat, while No. 100 UNC Greensboro is the No. 1 team in the league by scoring average. East Tennessee State is ranked 110th.
While Wes Gosselin has led UTC this season, he certainly hasn’t carried the Mocs by himself. The senior is one of three team members to have won or shared a tournament title this year, with Brooks Thomas and Etienne Brault being the others. Stuart Thomas has been one of the team’s most consistent players, and Phillip Hickam has a second-place finish.
“To have guys that know how to close the deal, know how to finish and can handle that pressure is a big boost in our favor,” Guhne said. “I think it helps us a lot, because the pressure can get turned up a little bit. The intensity is there, so to have guys that are used to playing under that kind of pressure, that kind of intensity, trying to get the job done and are able to do it, I think that gives them a lot of confidence knowing that they can do it.”
The 12th-year head coach said he feels the Mocs are playing the best golf they have all year. They’ve progressively gotten better and have been able to post good results under differing circumstances. Gosselin wasn’t present when UTC played in the Southern Intercollegiate in Athens, Ga., and the team earned a sixth-place finish without the 2016 Tennessee State Amateur champion.
“The last two years we’ve done everything I could ask off the course, in the gym, in the classroom,” Gosselin said. “We’ve consistently done what we’re supposed to do, worked hard, done the right things, and while we don’t need validation of the results, it would be awesome to know how hard we’ve worked.
“It sucks not being there, having not won since 2013, and that’s something I definitely want to do.”
And that’s the expectation within the team – to win.
“We absolutely do,” Gosselin said. “We have an incredible group of guys – I think we’ve got guys sitting at home that could win – and we’ve consistently done what we’re supposed to do the last two years.
“We really think the results will take care of themselves if we go play, trust it and enjoy it.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.