Wake Forest golf in the NCAA Regionals

*WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. –* The Wake Forest men’s golf team will start the 
NCAA Regionals Thursday morning at the Galloway National Golf Club in 
Galloway, N.J.
 
The Demon Deacons will send senior Dustin Groves, juniors Brendan Gielow  and Travis Wadkins as well as freshman Daniel Meggs and Lee Bedford in search of Wake Forest’s fourth regional win in the last five seasons.
 
Wake is the No. 5 seed in the 14-team regional. The top five teams and 
top individual not on those teams at the end of 54 holes will advance to 
the NCAA Championships at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, on May 26-30.
 
Wake Forest is paired with Tennessee and Colorado State in Thursday’s 
opening round. The teams will start on the back nine at 8:50 a.m.
 
Live scoring of the regional can be found at www.golfstat.com.
 
Recently, head coach Jerry Haas sat down for a Q & A on the upcoming 
NCAA Regional.
 
> *Do you think the change in the regional format has made it easier or
> tougher to advance?*
>
> *JH: *Well, I think time will tell. I think it had to be done whether it
> was for travel reasons or for pace of play or to get all of the teams
> around in the same weather but I think if the committee evens out the
> fields the way they should, I think you will see the top-teams advance
> on regardless of the format.
>
> *A lot of coaches feel the NCAA Regional is the toughest, most
> pressure-packed three days of the year. Regardless of what your team has
> done to that point in your season, you have to be one of the five best
> teams at a site to advance to the NCAA Championships. Do you feel the
> same?*
>
> *JH:* Absolutely. It’s definitely a team effort maybe more-so this week
> than any other week. You need everyone to play well one through five
> because you never know what’s going to happen. A guy could get hurt
> during the practice round, get sick or catch a really unlucky break or
> even just have a bad round and you can’t let that affect the team score.
> You need to have four solid scorers each day and you can’t bury yourself
> with one bad round. We try not to frame it that way but if you have a
> bad round in a tournament during the year, you can shift your focus on
> getting better for the next week but with the regionals, there is no
> next week if you aren’t playing well.
>
>
> *Looking at the New Jersey regional, how do you think it stacks up
> compared to the other sites?*
>
> *JH:* I think the committee did a very good job of spreading out the
> field and I think our regional falls in the middle. Looking at the
> numbers, there are probably some easier regionals but I think there are
> some tougher ones too. So I like where we’re at. Regardless though, you
> are still going to have to play well no matter where your at. You have
> to finish in the top-5 which is tough to do at any tournament, let alone
> the regionals.
>
>
> *Nobody on the team has played the Galloway National Golf Club. Is that
> a disadvantage?*
>
> *JH:* I don’t think it’s an advantage or disadvantage either way. Unless
> someone took their team up there for a round, I don’t think any team has
> really played the course all that much. We will get out there in the
> practice round and find out where to go and where not to go and then
> make slight adjustments along the way. So I don’t think it will hurt us
> at all not having seen the course before.
>
> *The team has been a bit up-and-down this year. How do you think the
> guys are playing now heading into this weekend?*
>
> *JH: *We typically play well at the regionals and I think that is
> because final exams are over and the guys can relax a little. They don’t
> have to study or worry about going to class, they can just play golf.
> They can go play or chip and putt whenever they want and I think that
> relaxes them a little bit and they seem to play better. So I think they
> are ready to go.
>
>
> *Is your goal to just get out of the regional, or more than that?*
>
> *JH:* I think in any tournament or qualifier you play in, you try to do
> the best you can. You want to win any competition and this one isn’t any
> different. Playing well at the regionals can give you a lot of
> confidence moving onto the championship. I think if you look at Georgia
> Tech a few years ago when we beat them at the regionals, they were a
> highly-ranked team and their confidence was a bit rattled and they
> didn’t play as well as they wanted at NCAAs. But I think the opposite
> can be true too. We have won a couple of regionals the last few years
> but haven’t played all that well at the finals. Some guys will say one
> is just as good as five, but we want to go out there and play our best
> golf and try to finish as high as we can.