Trahan, NCAA championship team a model for Penley's Tigers

Armed with extraordinary talent and depth, Clemson golf coach Larry Penley is expecting great things from his Tigers over the next 24 months.

As a first step toward fulfilling their potential as a nationally-dominant team, Penley is asking his current group of young players to look back to the beginning of a cycle that ultimately resulted in Clemson winning the 2003 national championship.

“I keep thinking back to the 2002 season, when we didn't have any seniors,” said Penley. “Lucas Glover and John Engler and Jani Saari had just graduated, and I don't think we were even ranked in the preseason. That's when DJ Trahan emerged. That's when DJ Trahan became DJ Trahan.

“Now I don't necessarily expect one of these guys to go out and win the Ben Hogan Award as national player of the year like DJ did that year, even though some of them are capable. But the kind of confidence and playing leadership that DJ brought that year just spread all throughout that team and then the following year we won the national championship.

“It was just a mind-set that he had, and it brought Gregg Jones and Matt Hendrix and Jack Ferguson to a whole different level, playing-wise. They're practicing and playing with this guy every day, and they know he's a great player. All of a sudden DJ starts winning tournaments. Now those other guys start thinking that they can start winning tournaments, and they did. Gregg won a tournament, Matt won a couple of tournaments and Jack was rarely out of the top 10. When you get that many guys playing at that level, you just don't get beat.

“This year it is critical for us to develop some dominant players.”

Penley has plenty of candidates, led by a trio of underclassmen who played a prominent role on a 2009-10 team that flirted with greatness.

Combined, junior Jacob Burger and sophomores Crawford Reeves and Corbin Mills played in 33 of 36 possible tournaments and recorded six top-10 finishes and 14 top-25 finishes. They're joined by junior transfer David Dannelly, a veteran of 16 college tournaments in his two seasons at Coastal Carolina, where he won the Big South Conference title in 2008 and finished as runner-up in 2009.

“We could get what we need from any, or all, of those guys,” said Penley, whose Tigers will open their fall season next weekend at the Carpet Capital Collegiate at The Farm in Rocky Face, GA. “That's going to make it a really interesting year. We have an opportunity to be real good. The talent pool and talent level is as deep as it's ever been. But at this point, we don't have a dominant player, and that's something we need to develop this year.

“We need for a couple of these guys to make All-American and raise the bar for this team a little bit. The exciting thing for Jordan (Byrd) and me is there are a number of guys who could do that. I'm expecting some guys to emerge. That's what this team is going to be all about.”

Penley said he expects Burger, Reeves and Mills to have grown from their experiences last season, both positive and negative.

“I think we're going to see some huge benefits with those three guys this year,” Penley said. “They're going to be a lot more comfortable, a lot less intimidated, and a lot more relaxed. And they've seen most of the golf courses we'll play on, because our schedule hasn't changed hardly at all.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Penley noted that the trio was part of a team that experienced “two really bad collapses last year.”

“On the back nine at the ACC tournament, we went from either tied for the lead or within a shot to finishing sixth,” he said. “That was a total collapse in a four or five-hole stretch. And then at the NCAA finals, exactly the same thing happened. We played great and we battled and battled and got ourselves to position, and then we just decided to go the other way. That's a mind-set.”

Penley said one of his primary objectives for the four-tournament fall season is to gauge where the Tigers are mentally.

“I'm going to treat them with passive gloves at the beginning of the fall and see what happens, and if I don't see it emerging then they're going to hear about it,” said Penley. “They have to understand how good they are. It bothers me that they can go out and play average or mediocre golf.

“I just don't know that the belief and the trust is quite there yet. I'm not worried about their physical games – they're rock solid. Our ball-striking skills are excellent and our fundamentals are excellent. Now we have to develop a mental approach that gets us to the next level.

“I'll know how they're thinking by the way they play in the first couple of tournaments,” he added. “We're qualifying for the first tournament and then I'm picking for The Preview. I'm going to pick my five and then see. If we don't at least go to The Preview with some confidence and a sense of urgency to play well on a national level, then we're going to do some re-evaluating mentally.

“That's pretty much where we are. I want to them to tell me where they think their games are on a national scale, and where they think our team is on a national scale.”