Feb. 2, 2008

The TCU men's golf program will enter the 2008 spring season with high hopes after an extremely strong finish to its fall campaign.

With a first-place showing at the MacDonald Cup to go along with an impressive resurgence at The Prestige at PGA West where the Purple and White came back to finish fourth overall, the Frogs feel very confident about jumping out to a quick start in their first competition of the season at the UH Hilo Intercollegiate in Waikoloa, Hawaii.

The Frogs will be joined at the Waikoloa Village Course on Wednesday to hit the links with some of the best teams in the country in Georgia Tech, Texas Tech and Kansas to go along with a plethora of PAC-10 programs in Arizona State, Stanford, Oregon, USC and Washington.

"With this being the first tournament of the season, we are very excited and eager to get started," said TCU head men's golf coach Bill Montigel. "We haven't competed in a while, but just came off six rounds of qualifying where I feel extremely good about our chances. Going into such a competitive tournament is something my guys look forward to, and I know Stanford, Georgia Tech and Arizona State along with the rest of the field will bring a highly-competitive atmosphere that we're looking forward to."

In order to qualify to be a part of the Frogs' traveling team, 11 members of the Purple and White competed in six qualifying rounds where the top five scores made the trip to Hawaii to open up the spring season for TCU. The depth of the Frogs' squad brought out an early competitive atmosphere that will definitely benefit the program heading into the UH Hilo Intercollegiate.

"The qualifying rounds gives us great competition right at our home courses. When we are in Hawaii, those who didn't qualify are working to pre-qualify for our upcoming tournaments, and the guys who did qualify know they need to play well in order to keep their positions. There is always competition that really fuels our team to continue to get better," Montigel added.

The five Frogs that earned their ticket to Hawaii include senior Franklin Corpening (Fort Worth, Texas/Paschal H.S.), juniors James Sacheck (Zionsville, Ind./Zionsville H.S.) and Robby Ormand (Austin, Texas/James Bowie H.S.) to go along with brothers Travis Woolf (Fort Worth, Texas/Paschal H.S.) and Jordan Woolf (Fort Worth, Texas/Arlington H.S.).

The Frog lineup will be stacked for the UH Hilo Intercollegiate as Corpening captured the qualifying tournament by 10 strokes while Ormand is the reigning Mountain West Conference individual champion.

Sacheck notched an extremely strong fall campaign while Travis Woolf earned a trio of top-20 finishes during the fall season. Jordan Woolf will be making his collegiate debut at the UH Hilo Intercollegiate for the Frogs.

"With so many tournaments on our hands during the spring season, we are ultimately just going to try to improve in each tournament. We are trying to be the best team that we can possibly be and be as competitive as possible at the end of the season. I'm very confident in the lineup that we are competing with in Hawaii, and I know that we have a group of players at home who are working hard in order to be on the traveling team for our next tournament. That competitiveness will pay off for us when the conference tournament comes around," added Montigel.

The UH Hilo Intercollegiate will consist of 54-hold stroke play with the lowest four scores counting for each day. Team ties will be broken using the fifth players scores on the third round followed by the second round and first round. Individual ties will be broken by a sudden death playoff hold while final round pairings will be based on team scores.

The UH Hilo Intercollegiate will begin on Wednesday (Feb. 6) with the first round followed by Thursday's second round and Friday's final round of competition.

TCU Athletic Media Relations