Five winners on PGA Tour made stops at Georgia first

These days, the road to victories and riches on the PGA Tour starts in Athens, Ga., where University of Georgia golf coach Chris Haack is turning out battle-tested players ready to win. Haack’s never had a deeper and more talented group playing the PGA Tour than right now.

This season, which started in early October under the tour’s new 2013-14 wraparound schedule, there have been six wins by former Bulldogs.

“Georgia has always been highly ranked as a college team, so now some of the talent is coming out,” said 2012 Mast­ers champion Bubba Watson, a former Bulldog who won at Torrey Pines this season and has five career tour wins.

“Obviously, Georgia is putting them through the ringer the right way to teach them for later in life in professional golf,” Watson said. “So they’re performing. It’s crazy how much positivity is coming out of the University of Georgia right now.”

Patrick Reed has two wins this season, and Harris English, Russell Henley and Chris Kirk also have won. They are all in the Masters, along with Watson, who has a lifetime invitation as a former champion.

Kirk’s senior year at Georgia was 2007, and Watson’s was 2008. Reed played in fall 2008 before transferring to Augusta State in spring 2009 and leading the Jaguars to national titles in 2010 and 2011 before turning pro after his junior year. English and Henley were in the Class of 2011 at Georgia.

In the past seven-plus months, former Bulldogs golfers have two other wins: English in Memphis in early June and Reed in Greensboro, N.C., in mid-August.

Haack, or “Hacker” as the coach is known by his players, is getting much of the credit for the Bulldogs’ early-season dominance.

“I guess it would have to be all Hacker,” said Hudson Swafford, a Bulldog from the Class of 2011 who is on the PGA Tour. “Hacker gives us all the tools to get better. It’s kind of paid off. Everybody I played with is on tour except Adam Mitchell, and he’s on the Web.com Tour. It’s been a good ride.”

Haack, who took over at Geor­gia in 1996, has created a system that seems perfect for churning out players ready to win as pros. With first-class facilities and pleasant weather for much of the year, he has no problem coaxing many of the nation’s best juniors to Athens. But it’s what Haack does with them once they get there that is notable.

Instead of installing a pre-set lineup, Haack’s system somewhat mirrors that of the PGA Tour. Everyone has to qualify every week, and only a top-10 individual finish in one tournament earns an exemption into the next.

“Pretty much every day while they were here, we had them in a pressure cooker and had them in situations where they were always having to perform,” Haack said. “They really never had a free ride into playing. They were always very used to the competition, and at some point they learned how to handle it. In some form or fashion, they embraced that, and it’s helped them be more successful.”

Said English: “It’s all about the competition, and we had so many good guys that love competing with each other. Hacker was all about just staying out of our way. He recruited the best players to come and play and then just stayed out of the way and let us do what we do. I got better because I was playing against Russell and Hudson and all the guys I love playing against, and it made me better.”

Kirk credits Haack’s system for helping him handle the pressure at last fall’s McGladrey Classic. Likewise, English stayed steady at Mayakoba in mid-November while his nearest rivals faltered, and Henley stood tall in early March at the Honda Classic, where he won the sudden-death playoff.

“Coach Haack has the best philosophy, I think, of any college coach there is,” Kirk said. “We just focused on competition amongst each other. So, I was first-team All-American my junior year and one of the top‑ranked players in the country, and I was playing in qualifying my senior year to get into the next tournament, and I knew I had to play well to make it. So I think that’s really big, you know. We always were very competitive against each other, and that sort of got everybody going. And everyone’s continued to compete really well at the pro level.”

In addition to superb facilities at Georgia, the Bulldogs annually play one of the top schedules in the country, which Henley said helped make the players’ adjustment to the level of competition on the PGA Tour easier. And because of strong booster support, Swafford said the team “got to do a lot of things a lot of other teams didn’t.”

The fact that Athens is just 100 miles from Augusta National could play a role in a former Bulldog joining Watson as a Masters winner.

“Absolutely,” Swafford said. “It’s definitely a good atmosphere there, you have a lot of support just being down the road. I couldn’t think of a better place to win a major.”

Kirk agreed.

“We’ve got a lot of really good players on tour, and I know that tournament means a lot to all of us,” he said. “It probably means more to us than the other guys. Just by the sheer odds of it, we’ve got a bunch of good players who are bound to win it sometime soon.”

Adding a seat for another Bulldog at the annual Champions Dinner would no doubt please Masters Tournament and Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Billy Payne, who played football for the Bulldogs and attends the dinner. But Georgia Tech has done well at Augusta, too.

The Yellow Jackets have as many Masters champions – Larry Mize in 1987 – as the Bulldogs. The school can also lay claim to Bobby Jones, who co-founded the Masters and Augusta National.

This year’s Masters field has a strong contingent of former Georgia Tech players: 2009 British Open champion Stewart Cink; six-time tour winner Matt Kuchar; and Roberto Castro, who finished 21st in the FedEx Cup standings last year.

With so many players with Peach State ties competing this year, Georgia could be on the minds of many come Masters Sunday.

“The Masters is one of those tournaments where the best player normally wins,” said Cink, who lives in Duluth, Ga. “And some of the best players right now are from Georgia.”