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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 1982)
Texas A&M Satisfying dividends Aggie golfer Briggs’ efforts result in improvement, success Battalion Sports June 8, 1982 Page 11 by Frank L. Christlieb Sports Editor About two months before the end of the 1982 college golf sea son, junior Danny Briggs found himself in a dilemma. Even though he’d spent the fall and spring seasons working to improve it, Briggs’ golf game just hadn’t reached the stan dards he hoped would result from his extra effort. But then Briggs turned to Texas A&M golf coach Bob Ellis, in his seventh year with the Aggies, to attempt to discover an explanation for his ailing stroke. “I told Coach Ellis, ‘This is the hardest I’ve ever worked, and nothing’s happening,”’ Briggs said Monday in an telephone in terview from Longview, where he’s competing in a pro-am tour nament at the Oak Forest Coun try Club. “He told me to be pa tient, so I did and it worked.” It worked. Yes, it worked well enough to catapult the 5-10, 165-pound Briggs and the Aggies to a Southwest Confer ence championship and a fourth-place finish in the NCAA national tournament in. Pine- hurst, N.C., May 26-29. And Briggs, nicknamed by friends and teammates as Mr. PR for his golf-induced public relations skills, said he takes pride in personal and team accomplishments. “I’m really proud for all the guys on the team for what we did this season, and for myself, too,” he said. “I felt Texas A&M was well represented. “I also feel it’s a great begin ning for (athletic director and head football coach) Jackie Sherrill, and I’m happy to see that. And of course, I’m happy for Coach Ellis — he’s done a great job for us.” All in all, Briggs said, his de termination and effort during the 1981-82 season paid satis fying dividends. As for the team, which didn’t win a single tourna ment until copping the SWC tro phy in April, Briggs said there’s a simple explanation for the sudden final surge. “When you’re playing in a tournament, you usually have five members on each team, but you only count the top four scores,” he said. “But in nearly every tournament, we had two guys play well and then two or three that didn’t play well. We just couldn’t get everyone play ing well in the same tournament. “We had three guys that were averaging 72 a round, and our fourth man was averaging 73. We should have won some tour naments with three guys averag ing 72.” But pre-conference medioc rity didn’t faze Briggs or his teammates at all, he said. “We were all very confident,” he said, “even after not winning any tournaments. We knew that it all had to come together some time. We went into the confer ence tournament mentally pre pared and ready. It was really the power of positive thinking. “People didn’t expect us to do well at nationals, but we knew we’d have a chance to do real well.” At the NCAA competition, the Aggies rebounded from eighth place after shooting a 290 the first day to second place af ter two rounds, finding them selves at the heels of the Hous ton Cougars. After having defe ated the Cougars for the SWC crown, Briggs said, the Aggies believed that a two-shot deficit could be overcome with ease. It was Briggs’ low of 65 in that second round that brought Texas A&M within two strokes of UH. With that performance, duplicated by the Cougars’ Billy Ray Brown the following day, Briggs tied previous NCAA low rounds shot by PGA touring pros Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange and Hale Irwin. Even after having endured assorted rain delays totaling ab out two hours during that second round, Briggs said he didn’t have much trouble get ting excited about tying the re cord. “It’s hard to describe the feel ing I had after shooting that 65,” he said. “After playing 7 Va hours out there, I was pretty tired. I didn’t even know I’d tied a re cord until I went in there soak ing wet and a girl asked me if I knew that I’d tied a record. “I seem to get a lot of confi dence and I concentrate a lot more when it’s raining. I must have gotten called off the course about three times during the round.” Although the Aggies didn’t hold onto second place, falling to fourth, Brigg said the team may have learned a lesson from the 1981 NCAA tournament at Stanford. That year, when the Aggies finished 10th in the country, they let second place slip away after the second round of the tourney. “We felt surprised, as if maybe we weren’t supposed to be there,” Briggs said. “But this year, when we were in second place, we knew that we had a chance to win it. We didn’t win it, but we were excited about finishing fourth. When you think about finishing fourth among all the schools in the na tion, that’s a big accomplish ment. “It was a good feeling, and we really felt we could have won it. But golf is an individual sport, and it’s also a day-by-day game. You can have it one day and then lose it the next day.” Texas A&M shot 282-291- 298 during the final three rounds to finish fourth, 20 shots behind the Cougars, 10 behind See BRIGGS page 13 “ntsui studeit nen wti “rial jofcl ‘J^lggic all-America golfer Danny Briggs led his team jth typa P rst pl ace * n the Southwest Conference and fourth lice in the NCAA tournament May 26-29 in North difficiii tarolina. 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