Michigan State University Athletics
Q&A With Men's Golf Coach Mark Hankins
2/20/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Feb. 20, 2004
EAST LANSING, Mich. -
Q: How do you feel about your team's performance in the fall season?
A: If you consider the fact we lost one of our main players from last year, Casey Lubahn, (who sat out the fall semester), I think we played really good at times and I think we finished a little slow at the end. We didn't compete as well as we would have liked but overall we're right around 40th in the country now. I think we've weathered the storm pretty good and with the nice schedule this spring, we can really improve on that 40th position.
Q: What do you like about this spring's schedule?
A: First of all, we're changing our schedule a little bit so we don't play a tournament on spring break in Orlando. We've replaced it with the Border Olympics, which is Texas A&M's tournament and it's a little later. We are playing in Purdue's tournament, which has a really good field. Ohio State's tournament is really nice and our tournament is really nice so we've got really five-high level tournaments in a row that we play, we don't have one weak tournament on our schedule. Playing average to good golf in all of those tournaments can continue to help our ranking.
Q: What were the highlights of the fall?
A: I think we played extremely well at Toledo. We got off and were leading some really nice teams; some highly ranked top five teams. We really hung in there. We didn't finish as highly as we would have liked but we had a chance to play against UCLA, Florida, Oklahoma State, teams that are going to be at the NCAA tournament. I also think Craig Revell winning his first tournament at Wisconsin as a freshman is really an incredible feat for any freshman to first of all go to the first tournament, qualify to go on a good team, second of all to play well, and third of all win. Then have two other freshmen at the same tournament finish in the top 10 with him. So it was really a nice tournament in Wisconsin and then we played really well in Toledo.
Matt Harmon shot a really good round at Duke, a freshman record, and on a really hard golf course under tough conditions at the end of a tournament when you're a little bit tired, so that was really a nice achievement. We finished second at the Adam's Cup again; we tend to play well there every year. That's really kind of a special tournament for us. There are quite a few things there that we're proud of and that we can definitely build on.
Q: What is the team looking to improve on in the off-season?
A: I think one of our major areas of concern was our conditioning, and what I mean by that is every time we come into the spring we have issues where we haven't been playing golf in three months. It's been Christmas; it's been a month off and getting into golf shape requires that you walk for four or 10 hours and you play golf carrying 30 pounds on your back. It's tough to replicate. We do the best things we can by working out, running stairs. We work out five days a week as we prepare. I believe we just need to work a little bit more on our mindset towards the season, such as trying to be very responsible individually for themselves and being positive at all times. Also, it's giving 100% every time they play, practice or workout and that hasn't changed. I think we put an emphasis on that before we started this spring.
Q: What positives and negatives are there in practicing at the dome?
A: One thing you can't do very well is hit wedge shots because we're going to go down and play on soil that gives out a lot easier in Florida sandy soil whereas mats tend to bounce. We can replicate it a little bit indoors here because we have mats that give a little bit but wedges are tough. We have a decent putting green here, but again more of uneven lies are tough to replicate. People don't even think about that. We're standing on perfect mat all the time hitting shots. You can hit it left-to-right, right-to-left, high or low, but how many times do you get in a fairway and it's just dead flat firm. It doesn't happen very often. So it's harder to replicate lies, wedging, chipping. I think the rest of it we do a pretty good job with.
Q: How can you build momentum in the off-season heading into the spring?
A: Competition for sure. I force them to compete in whatever they do. They are very competitive guys so even in running or lifting they're all trying to improve to compete with fellow teammates as well as get better as a team, to compete against other teams. I think that's one thing that we always try to do is keep it fun by competing against each other.
Q: What are your team's strengths?
A: Our strength has always been five solid players. I think that showed up pretty well in the fall again. At different times we had different guys being our No. 1 and I think we rotated four guys at the position: Andrew, Ben, Matt and Craig. They kind of rotated as being the better player at whatever point. When you can do that with five guys you've really got something. I think we did it with four and having Casey back, who averaged 72.7 last year. I don't know what to expect from him right now, he's still getting better physically, but I think he's going to be a solid contributor.
