UA men's golf team enters SECs in midpack

Arkansas' Mason Overstreet, right, talks with coach Brad McMakin during the SEC Championship at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga.

The No. 17 Arkansas Razorbacks men's golf team will try to make it a clean sweep of SEC championships this week at St. Simons Island, Ga.

The Razorbacks will look to duplicate the feat of the women's team, which captured the first match-play final in SEC history over South Carolina on Sunday to win the program's first SEC championship.

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SEC Men’s Golf Championships

Where St. Simons Island, Ga.

Course Sea Islands Course, par 70, 6,898 yards

When Today through Sunday

Format 3 rounds of stroke play, top eight teams seeded for 3 rounds of match play

TV SEC Network (Saturday and Sunday only)

Tee time & partners 1:55 p.m., Kentucky and Ole Miss

Projected Arkansas lineup (stroke average) Alvaro Ortiz (70.6), Mason Overstreet (71.0), Luis Garza (72.3), William Buhl (72.1), Tyson Reeder (74.8)

Noteworthy The SEC championships have been played at Sea Island every year since 2001, with Georgia claiming the title in six of the 17 years. In that span, Alabama has four championships, Florida two, and the quintet of Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, Tennessee and Vanderbilt have one each. … Vanderbilt is the defending SEC champion after winning the stroke play portion and going 3-0 in match play, including a 3-2 victory over Texas A&M for the title.

The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville men's team has a considerably tougher task on its hands, but Coach Brad McMakin thinks the Hogs are up for it.

"If we just play solid, we'll compete here," McMakin said. "The firepower is there. Our good is really good. We've just got to eliminate the one bad round we've played per tournament this semester. And it's usually in the first round."

The Razorbacks are the seventh-highest ranked SEC team at the event, which will take place at the par-70 Sea Islands Course, a 6,898-foot layout on a strip of land adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean between Savannah, Ga., and Jacksonville, Fla. They'll tee off today at 1:55 p.m. with No. 21 Kentucky and Ole Miss.

No. 2 Texas A&M will enter as the favorite, though No. 4 Vanderbilt, No. 6 Alabama, No. 8 Auburn, No. 9 Florida, No. 10 LSU, the Razorbacks and Kentucky all lurk in the top 25.

The Razorbacks will need to play better than in their past two outings since winning the Southern Intercollegiate over 17 teams on March 12 in Athens, Ga. Arkansas tied for 10th at the Valspar Collegiate and finished eighth at the Aggie Invitational in their two intervening competitions and have an 11-16-1 head-to-head record.

The Razorbacks have a strong 1-2 punch at the top of their order in senior Alvaro Ortiz and sophomore Mason Overstreet. Ortiz, the two-time runner-up at the Latin America Amateur Championship, has the low round 15 times to lead Arkansas and tied teammate Luis Garza for medalist honors at the Southern Intercollegiate.

Overstreet, the NCAA runner-up last year, has the low round 10 times and claimed a tie for first at the Jerry Pate Intercollegiate.

"We've got to have Alvaro and Mason show up and play well this week, and we can compete in stroke play," McMakin said.

The freshman Garza was the Razorbacks' top finisher at the Valspar Collegiate on March 20, the week after tying Ortiz in Athens. Sophomore William Buhl was the Hogs' top finisher at the Aggie Invitational two weeks ago.

Tyson Reeder, a transfer at the semester break, shot back-to-back rounds of 72 in poor conditions to wrap up the Aggie Invitational, a feat McMakin described as "incredible."

McMakin said the Razorbacks have taken different tacts to the normally windy seaside course, which often plays like a links course.

"We've played it pretty conservative some years," he said. "The last few years we've kind of taken a more aggressive plan to it, a lot more drives off the tee."

Because of the match-play final rounds, McMakin said the Razorbacks might play more conservatively.

"As long as you eliminate big numbers, I mean, that's what gets most teams out here," he said. "If you can keep the double and triple bogeys off your card on four or five holes, you can shoot good scores out here."

Sports on 04/25/2018