Randy Wylie announces 2025 fall slate for men's golf
Head Coach Randy Wylie has announced the 2025 fall schedule that features two trips to the Georgia and rounds out with the Bearcat Classic in South Carolina.
VIDEO: Randy Wylie Full Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Head Coach Randy Wylie has announced the 2025 fall schedule that features two trips to the Georgia and rounds out with the Bearcat Classic in South Carolina.
Wylie says this year's schedule is going to present some major challenges for the team.
"We're playing the best teams in the country the first two events and the best teams in the region and in the country. So we're going to have to be ready, and it's coming quick," he said. "So I'm really excited about it and I know the guys are really excited too."
It will be a relatively fresh start for the Eagles this year, with three major contributors graduating, the nine newest members of the team will need to step up to set the tone for championship season in the spring.
"We have some new players that are third-year transfers who have a lot of college experience and I expect that to be pretty seamless for them," Wylie said. With freshmen, you always get some kids who adapt to college golf really quickly and some that take sometimes their whole freshman year to really get in the groove of college golf."
Getting the team acclimated quickly is going to be important in the fall particularly considering the two most challenging tournaments of the season come right out of the gate. Multiple top ten teams in the nation will be attending the Mizuno Intercollegiate and the Hurricane Invitational in the second and third weeks of September.
Wylie is confident that this team will be ready to hit the ground running.
"They've been preparing throughout the summer at home on their own. I think all of them are coming in here with a lot of summer golf behind them so they're pretty sharp," he said. We've just got to be mentally tough enough and believe in ourselves enough to go out and play smart and do a good job to start the year."
Every tournament is important too. Even though the championship season for men's golf is in the spring, fall tournaments are rated equally in the standings for NCAA tournament bids.
"It's really important not to have bad stretches whether it's to begin the spring or to begin the fall. If you really have like two or three bad tournaments in a row it really puts you behind the eight ball as far as the NCAA tournament invites go," he said.
A new tournament Carson-Newman will be attending in the fall is the Doc Spragg Invitational on October 13-14. The Eagles will make the trip up to Findlay, Ohio to compete against some of the best teams in the Midwest. A good finish there could mean a boost in the NCAA rankings.
"We're very excited about going up there and playing those teams. We get to see them occasionally, but they're really good up there and that'll be really fun to go up and play a different style of golf course with the northern grasses," said Wylie.
With the level of experience from the transfer students and the history of Carson-Newman on this fall's slate of golf courses Wylie knows this team can accomplish its ultimate goal.
"We try to be pretty consistent. We want to win the conference and we want to play in the NCAA tournament. So that's what we're always trying to do," Wylie said.
In order to get there, the Eagles will look to control the controllables.
"I don't necessarily have a score expectation other than we're going to work hard right from the start and play smart at the tournaments and play with good attitudes and those kinds of things. And then it will fall in line where it falls."
Stay tuned for the Carson-Newman mens golf team's first tournament when they head to Gainsville, Georgia on September 12 and 13.
