"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

June 10, 2003

When Martha Freitag gathered her Vanderbilt women's golf team together for its first meeting of the fall season, she didn't have to say a word to get her most important point across.

Scrawled in big, bold letters on the board behind her was the message for the day and the season:

"NCAA 2003 National Champions. Get Comfortable With It."

"That sunk in right away," said Sarah Jacobs, in Chattanooga this week to defend her 2002 Tennessee Women's Amateur title at Black Creek. "You can talk a lot of talk about having a good team and trying to win the national championship. But you've got to believe you can do it.

"I give my coach a lot of credit for making us believe we could win it all."

The Commodores fell a few strokes short of their goal at the NCAA championships at Purdue last month, finishing 14^th, but it was still the lowest finish ever by the school. And with only senior Nikki Cutler departing and a pair of nationally ranked juniors joining the program as freshmen in the fall, the program has never been in better shape.

If Freitag thought her team was comfortable with the concept of winning the national title this season, wait until next year. Can Vanderbilt, not that long ago a middle-of-the-pack program at best, actually win it all?

"Absolutely we can," Jacobs said. "We are so talented. When we're all on our 'A' games, it's hard to beat us."

Jacobs knows a little about being on her 'A' game. This is the young lady who shot a 61 in the Nashville Women's Metro when she was still in high school.

There's plenty more firepower behind Jacobs and Courtney Wood, the Tennesseans who stayed at home and helped resurrect Vanderbilt women's golf. That much was in evidence at Black Creek on Tuesday, during stroke play qualifying for the state amateur.

Chattanooga's May Wood, taking full advantage of local knowledge, was the low qualifier with a 4-under-par-68 that she knew could have been four shots lower. And rising junior Joni Gossett, her game vastly improved from her days as a Tennessee high school player, came in just behind Wood with a 70.

"It's remarkable where Vanderbilt golf has come from, to where it is today," Gossett said. "And it's great we've done this with a group of some of Tennessee's best junior girls. All of us could have played at other places, but we decided to stay at home and try to build something at Vanderbilt. Our coach is really after national prominence. And we've all bought into that."

That was certainly the attraction for Wood, who a year ago was widely considered the nation's top recruit coming out of high school. She could have played at any school in the country. Wood's father Mark likes to tell the story of his daughter's recruiting trip to Vanderbilt. One of the stops was to athletic director Todd Turner's office.

"He was giving us the big recruiting pitch," Mark Wood said, laughing at the recollection. "And he said to May, 'You know, if you come to Vanderbilt, we've got a chance to become a top five program.' And May just looked at him, shook her head and held up one finger. Todd's jaw dropped."

Wood did her best to help Vanderbilt achieve that goal, and at times during the year the Commodores, and Wood, could beat anyone. Wood won a tournament in the spring and was Vandy's low finisher in the NCAAs, but she gave her overall game a C+ for the year.

"I started to get my rhythm late in the year, or I wouldn't have given [her letter grade] that plus," Wood said. "I had an average year."

"She did struggle at times in the fall," Mark Wood said. "But she came into college golf with a lot of pressure on her. The expectations were pretty high."

Wood also underestimated the homesickness factor when she moved to Nashville last August. "It was tough, coming from a close family, for me to leave," Wood said. "It took me a long time to get used to that, being away from home."

On those days when homesickness got the best of her, good friend Jacobs was always around.

"I'd call her, and she'd always take me to her house, cook me a meal, and make me feel like I was home," Wood said. "It was great having her there."

To Jacobs, the feeling was mutual. The pair had competed against and with one another on the state level for years, but never got the opportunity to spend a lot of time together.

"Our friendship has really blossomed," Jacobs said. "I don't know what I'd do without May. She's really a special girl."

Freitag has assembled a special group. Talk to Wood, Jacobs or Gossett and it becomes clear. To a long-time basketball writer who sometimes gets frustrated trying to extract interesting quotes from players who don't want to be in school in the first place, talking to the Vandy ladies is a treat. Listen to Jacobs describing Freitag, "She's so insightful." Or Gossett explaining the virtues of caddying for her brother David on the PGA Tour, which she does occasionally.

And then there's Wood, who used to be so shy and modest she kept her distance from the media. No longer. She's become polished, well spoken, interesting and pretty darn insightful herself.

Though she's certainly had to entertain the thought of turning professional—even swing coach Phil Ritson is putting the hard-sell on her—Wood steadfastly maintains that she's in for the long haul at Vanderbilt.

"Pro golf will always be there," Wood says, so unlike the hired guns in college basketball who can't wait for their shot at the NBA. "I'm enjoying this right now. Vanderbilt was the perfect school for me. I'm having fun."

*** Feedback ***
click here to give us your comments about this article,
 or suggest a subject for a future article