The Clemson golf team returned from Chapel Hill and the NCAA Regional with a shag bag full of records and most importantly a ticket to the NCAA Finals starting on May 24th in Carlsbad, California.

One of the team records set was the final score. The Tigers finished at 25 under par for the lowest NCAA Regional score ever by Clemson.

If this was a weekend member-guest someone might accuse the Tigers of sandbagging.

Clemson entered the Regional field with ETSU, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Long Beach State and a few other ranked teams as the 11th seed and the 59th ranked team in the country and beat them all.

After the way the team finished the ACC tournament, even the most die hard Clemson fan had to be a little surprised by the records set and the teams the Tigers finished in front of at the Regional.

Don’t count Clemson coach Jordan Byrd among those that were surprised. The Tigers coach has believed in his team because he sees them put in the work and the time to earn results like they did in Chapel Hill.

“I can see what our team is doing every day. I know how hard they are working and how much they want to play,” he said. “The results have not always shown it, but I know this team has ability,” said Byrd.

After what Byrd called a “lousy” showing at the end of the ACC Tournament the Clemson coach was looking for some answers.

He talked with a few of the coaches at the tournament, but it turned out he had the answer to his questions right on campus.

Sometimes a different voice can say the same things with a different impact.

“We asked basketball coach Brad Brownell to come and speak to the team and he was great. He talked about becoming a great teammates and controlling the things you can control. He also talked about the power of momentum and how it affected his team in the NCAA Tournament and how it could help us,”said Byrd.

Taking some of what the Clemson basketball coach offered the team to go along with the hard work Byrd had seen from his group the Tigers played great in Chapel Hill.

“The part of Coach Brownell’s talk about the power of momentum applied to us. We made a few putts in the first round and then a few more and we had momentum,” said Byrd.

Much of the momentum came from senior Callahan Keever. The Eastside High School grad who played at Anderson before transferring to Clemson opened the Regional with a 65.

Statistically Keever was the fifth Tiger in the lineup, but after shooting another 65 in the second round he was the leader.

In the final round he fell back to fifth, but his birdie on his last hole earned the Tigers the Regional championship by a shot over East Tennessee State.

Clemson has one of the longest streaks in the country of advancing to NCAA Post Season play wining it all in 2003, but the Regional title was the first for the Tigers in 20 years.

“We got the positive momentum going and each one of our guys added something to the win,” said Byrd. Each one of the Tigers contributed at least one counting round and couple broke records.

Thomas Higgins carded a second round 63 to set a Clemson record for lowest score in a Regional.

Alberto Dominguez had a really good second round score that counted. Jonathan Nielsen carded all three rounds in the 60s and Andrew Swanson’s eagle – birdie finish set the stage for Keever’s wining putt.

When the team returned from Chapel Hill retired coach Larry Penley was on hand to congratulate the Tigers.

It is a quick turn around for the team, but that may be good to maintain the momentum they gained in Chapel Hill.

Byrd has given the team a few days off and all of them are expected to play some golf.

“We will get them back here for a little practice before we leave. I have felt all year we were better than our ranking and we played to our potential,” said Byrd.

NCAA Chapel Hill Regional scores from Golfstat https://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=team&tid=29178