For the last four seasons, the ETSU men’s golf team has won the men’s Southern Conference golf tournament, this year marking their 24th overall title.
The 20th ranked Buccaneers seemed to soar over their competition, posting 70 birdies over the tournament and a whopping 26 in the final round alone. ETSU dominated for well over a majority of the time, only trailing one time the entire tournament on Tuesday afternoon with a late Chattanooga push for the gold.
In a reversal from last year, ETSU held a 14-shot lead on Tuesday before seeing Chattanooga make a run late to eventually take the lead for a short minute. However, back-to-back birdies by Mats Ege (Kristiansand, Norway) on No. 16 and 17, combined with Chattanooga’s John Houk carding a double-bogey on the par-3, 15th and former Buccaneer Samuel Espinosa-Trueba posting a bogey on the par-4, 16th, moved ETSU back to the top of the leaderboard at 30-under.
Matthew Dodd-Berry (Wirral, England) and Ege both finished tied for first at 13-under-par 203 en route to earning co-medalist honors. This is the first time since 1964 the SoCon has had multiple individual champions when Bill Etherdige (The Citadel) and Charles Collett (George Washington) accomplished the feat.
Ege has made it back-to-back SoCon titles for his fifth career win, while Dodd-Berry – who finished runner-up to Ege last season – captured his first collegiate victory. Ege is the first player to win back-to-back titles since Western Carolina’s and current PGA Tour member J.T. Poston did so from 2014-15. This marks the first time a SoCon school has had five straight individual winners since Duke won eight straight from 1936-42, 1947 (the tournament was not contested from 1943-46). Overall, the Bucs have now had 20 individual SoCon winners – the most in conference history.
With their conference championship win, the Buccaneers punched their ticket to the 2024 NCAA Regionals. The Bucs will learn where they are headed on Wednesday, May 1, at 2pm on the Golf Channel.
