The Cowboy golf team goes into each season with the same expectations.
The program always expects to win championships, a lofty goal by anyone’s standard.
With a young cast of athletes this season, Oklahoma State came up short of an 11th national championship, but the team showed growth and maturity throughout the year that has coach Mike McGraw and the rest of the Cowboys excited about the future.
“We had the same goals as we always do,” McGraw said. “We go into every year expecting to win the conference championship and the national championship, but even though we didn’t meet our highest goal, these kids put in a lot of hard work and have a lot to look forward to.”
The Cowboys finished fourth at the 2008 NCAA Championship at the Birck Boilermaker Complex’s Kampen Course in West Lafayette, Ind., but it was not a lack of talent or great individual performances that kept the Cowboys from winning their first national championship since 2006; it was freshman mistakes.
“I saw a lot of bright spots in all our players,” McGraw said. “They all had great moments this year and at the national tournament but not quite enough consistency or experience down the stretch to win the national championship.
“Some of those weaknesses and mistakes come with youth, and I expect to see all of our players work hard and improve in order to do better next year.”
The Cowboys’ top golfers were a talented but unseasoned group starting with freshmen Rickie Fowler and Kevin Tway.
Fowler received the Ben Hogan Award as the nation’s top collegiate golfer and the Phil Mickelson Award given to the nation’s most outstanding freshman. Fowler is the third Cowboy golfer in the last four years to receive the Mickelson Award joining Pablo Martin in 2005 and Jonathan Moore in 2006.
“If you take Rickie’s overall year from beginning to end, he was probably better than the other two guys,” McGraw said. “He was certainly more consistent week in and week out.”
Fowler was the Cowboys’ top performer the NCAA championship, finishing in fourth place. He finished in the top 10 in 10 of his 12 starts.
Tway, the son of former Cowboy All-American and PGA participant Bob Tway, was inconsistent at the championship, finishing in a tie for 60th, but Tway turned his fortunes around and qualified for the U.S. Open on June 3.
“Kevin is incredibly excited to be playing in a major, as any 19-year-old kid would be,” McGraw said. “Hopefully something like this can be the key to him tapping into his overall skill as a golfer.”
Sophomore Trent Whitekiller also delivered for the Cowboys late in the year, culminating with a career-best seventh place finish at the NCAA Championship. It was his second top 10 finish in his last three starts.
“I tried not to make a big deal about the fact that we had a lot of freshmen and other young players,” McGraw said. “They are all good golfers and they are all good people, too.
“They were young and made mistakes, but I could definitely see their growth and progress, and that’s all I could have asked for.”
McGraw said there is a lot of pressure on the players to succeed and their consistent rate of improvement is a success in itself.
“We won the conference and got better each time out, and we worked our way up all year,” McGraw said. “Just to see the progress they made and their growth pleased me a lot, but there is still plenty of room for improvement and they know that. I am excited that each player has a solid summer schedule because it gives them each an opportunity to work hard and improve in all areas of their game.
“They all can, and need, to get better, but I think next season looks very promising for a talented group of kids.”
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