Poulter hopes Mitchell advice doesn’t come back to bite him

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Prairie View A&M University golf coach Kevin Jennings has an expansive history with what is now the PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship. He played in the event when it was the National Minority College Championship while he still was a high school student, competed as a college player and coached Talladega College to a title in what was then the NAIA Division for smaller schools. Never before had he won the Men’s Division 1 title at PGA WORKS, however. Until Wednesday. On a windy and difficult day on one of the toughest, most historic tracks on the PGA TOUR – the daunting Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass – Jenning’s Panthers came from behind, first catching Howard University and then holding off hard-charging Alabama State to capture the title. Prairie View, three-time champions of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), shot 18-over 306 on the Stadium on Wednesday, an effort bettered only by Alabama State (303). Florida A&M and Howard, the 36-hole leader, finished third and fourth, respectively. “I put on the back of our t-shirts, ‘Trust the Process,’ and it’s strange how things work out from time to time,” Jennings said. “Yeah, it’s a great feeling. … It just feels great to be with these guys and have some success. This is a good group.” In the Women’s Team Division, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi cruised to a 28-shot victory over Delaware State. The Islanders shot 24-over 312 on the Dye’s Valley Course, led by Lucy Martinez, who shot a final-round 74. Delaware State’s Baipor Khunsi (5-over 221) was the division’s medalist, edging Madison Lake (Texas A&M Kingville) by four shots. “Yesterday, when we played the Stadium, I was walking the fairway of 16 and saw all the people and the cameras, and I was like, ‘I feel like I’m on the PGA TOUR,” said Martinez, a sophomore from Aguascalientes, Mexico. “It was so awesome.” Phu Khine, a junior at UNC-Wilmington from Myanmar, shot 76 on the Stadium for a three-round total of 2-over 218 to win the Women’s Individual title, while Khavish Varadan of University of Alabama-Birmingham won the Men’s Individual crown. Varadan, a freshman, had not seen the Stadium Course since competing on it four years ago in the Junior Players Championship when he was 17. He would put together the most impressive stretch of the week. Teeing off on the 10th hole at the Stadium Course early Wednesday, in winds blowing to 15 mph, he played his first eight holes in 5 under par. He got up and down for birdie at the par-5 11th; birdied 13 (8 feet) and 15 from in tight; got up and down from the left side of the par-5 16th for birdie; and hit a knocked-down gap wedge that released to 8 feet at the island 17th. The birdie putt had 3 feet of break in it, and Varadan poured it in, building on the success of going to the arm-lock putting style at the recent Conference USA Championship, where he was runner-up. “He has broken through that glass barrier with his putting, and that was holding him back,” said UAB assistant coach Ryan Heisey. What impressed Heisey most about Varadan? “I’m real impressed with how calm he stays, even when he got into some places out there that were not ideal. He just focuses on the next shot. Calm. That’s how he is. You can’t tell if he is 5 under or 5 over out there, and that’s a good quality to have.” Even with a bogey at 18, Varadan turned in 32, leaving his closest competitor, 36-hole co-leader Timothius Tamardi (Appalachian State) five shots behind. Varadan went to his final hole (the par-5 ninth) at 4 under, tried to reach the green in two, clipped a tree, got a bad kick and finished with a double to shoot his second 2-under 70 on the Stadium. The last hole did little to dampen his spirits. He didn’t have much time to celebrate. He had an 8 a.m. tee time on Thursday at a U.S. Open local qualifier in Panama City. “You know your game is good when you’re playing well on golf courses like this,” said Varadan, who is from Malaysia. “I really wanted to test myself this week. I’m pretty impressed … It wasn’t my best stuff, but finishing under par on a golf course like this, it’s a bit of good golf.” The Men’s Division II Team Division went to Alabama’s Miles College, which placed three players, including medalist Anthony Lumpkin (76–231), inside the top 10. Medalist in the Men’s Division 1 field was Howard’s Gregory Odom Jr., who competed this week after losing his father, Greg Sr., to liver complications back home in Memphis on Saturday. Odom, a junior, told his coach he wanted to stay and compete, and his mom thought it was best, too. It is the first title of any kind for Howard, which restarted its golf program just 13 months ago with the financial backing of NBA All-Star Steph Curry. Coach Sam Puryear has experienced many victories at many levels of college golf, but said none had made him prouder than seeing Odom win. He shot 74 on the Stadium Wednesday, finishing his week at 4-over 220. “Not another player in this field carried a more heavy heart than this kid,” Puryear said of Odom, who was his very first Bison recruit. “To do what he did and hold your emotions in to the end, how do you do that? I just don’t know what’s better than that. There were 23 teams and 52 individual players competing in five divisions at this week’s PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship, which brings together Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Minority Serving Institutions. This was the 35th edition of the event, with the 2020 PWCC canceled because of COVID-19. On Sunday, student-athletes took part in a Career Expo at the new PGA Tour Headquarters. It was the final stop of the spring for many teams, but Prairie View A&M isn’t done with its season, as Wednesday afternoon it received its Regional bid to the NCAA Championships, representing the SWAC. The Panthers will play May 17-19 at the University of New Mexico, with momentum on their side. Coach Jennings boarded a charter bus with the team on Wednesday evening in Ponte Vedra Beach, hoping to get as far as Mobile, Ala., to break up the 14-hour ride home to Texas. For Jennings, the journey will be extra special having that PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship trophy by his side. It had been a week he won’t forget. Given the venue and the overall spirit of the competition, it was that kind of week for many student-athletes, too.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Justin Thomas is playing his third Presidents Cup and is 6-2-2 for his career, so it’s not unusual for rookies to ask him how to handle nerves. In this case, though, the rookie was singer/songwriter/keyboardist Sam Harrop. They were at the VIP party at the Westin hotel on Tuesday night, and Harrop, who had come from London to belt out his International and U.S. Team songs for fans on the first tee, was feeling anxious. Thomas told him that everyone, even the world’s best golfers, felt first-tee jitters, and he would be fine. Harrop was. With a 12:08 p.m. start Thursday – “Sounds like a tee time, doesn’t it?” – golf Twitter’s beloved crooner commenced playing from his perch in the stands, a Presidents Cup first. The crowd quieted down and even laughed, cheered and/or jeered at his lyrics. “It was an adrenaline rush like I’ve never experienced,” said Harrop, whose golf-themed cover songs have earned him nearly 20,000 Twitter followers, including many of the TOUR players he writes songs about. “I’ve never done this!” This Presidents Cup has set new standards with the more than 500,000-square-foot buildout, among other benchmarks, but it has also been the first of its kind in involving Harrop, a married father of two who works for a maker of sheet music in his day job. He flew here Sunday with his manager/former bandmate Jonathan Haselden not knowing what to expect. Haselden, who said they’re like an old married couple, had never even been to a golf tournament. “Sam’s generally always been pretty humble about his talents,” Harrop’s wife, Julia, a child psychologist, said via email from London. “I think he’s been more surprised than anyone by how it’s taken off. He gets really happy when any of the pro golfers reference him or re-tweet one of his songs. “He’s had cool things sent to him, too,” she continued, “like an engraved club and more recently his precious Tony Finau-signed cap!” (Harrop calls himself perhaps Finau’s biggest fan.) Harrop and Haselden used to play in a band called RedBoxBlue. Haselden was the lead singer; Harrop was the keyboardist. “We were the first band in the world to do a gig live on Facebook,” Haselden said. “London, 2008.” Alas, their fate was like that of so many bands: They broke up. For a while, Harrop scratched the creative itch by writing songs about family members, but he was always such a golf nut that it made sense to mash up two of his greatest passions. When his golf parodies began to take off, he enlisted Haselden to be his manager. Their first order of business this week was to sit with members of both teams to make a sort of music video of the U.S. and International Team songs, with the players singing lyrics. Harrop assumed they wouldn’t know him – not true; Finau, the subject of some of his earlier songs, knew who he was – and was pleasantly surprised when they played along. “They all got into it,” Harrop said. “Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Tony Finau – they got the lines out and they’re not terrible singers. Taylor Pendrith was in a band when he was younger. He wasn’t a singer; he played guitar, so we talked about that. And Tom Kim said he’d rather run around a room naked than sing, but two minutes later, he sang.” Harrop chuckled. As for Thomas, he refused to sing, but played along, otherwise, Harrop said. “J.T. was the most engaging one,” he said. The collaboration resulted in a pair of videos that made the rounds on social media. Then came the VIP party before the man who has been called “golf’s premier parodist” took his moment in the sun shortly after lunch Thursday. Adapting the lyrics of “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & The News to the specifics of the U.S. Team, and “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire to the makeup of the International Team, Harrop belted out his latest masterpieces. The crowd ate it up, especially the line that the U.S. Team might just win by five. “I told him, ‘You might get booed when you’re singing the other team’s song,’” Haselden said. “And he did, a bit, but in jest. What’s cool is how well received he is – no negativity at all.” Haselden and Harrop were in the hospitality chalet to the right of the first tee with the matches about to begin. Harrop, clutching a cold beer, was trying to come down off his performance high while taking in the scene. “I’m meters away from Jack Nicklaus,” he said, awe-struck. They planned to fly home after the second round Friday. Harrop said he would be taking a bus from Heathrow Airport to his house about an hour outside London. “I’m not big enough for a private car,” he said. Next week he’ll be back to his normal life, taking the kids to school. He doesn’t play as much golf as he used to, but the kids – Georgia, 9 and Theo, 7 – are old enough to go with him to the driving range. Be that as it may, Harrop will likely continue spending more time with keyboard than clubs. After all, the Ryder Cup in Italy is only a year away; now is not the time for rest.

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