University of Texas Golf May Be on a Title Track Again
Pierceson Coody won the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational individual title on Sunday.
Alex Miceli / Morning Read
A relay race goes wrong, leaving arguably your two best players injected and gone for months.
That was what the University of Texas golf team and its Coach of 35 years, John Fields, faced in October when the Coody Twins, Parker and Pierceson, hit a wall they presumed was padded as they were finishing a relay race at UT’s Indoor Athletic Performance Center.
Neither brother would require surgery, even though Pierceson broke a bone, and both would suffer radial-head fractures to right arms, requiring slings.
“They waited three days to call me,” said the Twins’ father, Kyle Coody. “Because they wanted to get CT scans, MRIs, X-rays, to know exactly what’s going to happen and what’s going on before they called me. because obviously, I was upset, Shocked and all that. ”
According to Pierceson, it was dead silence on the line when he told his father what had happened.
Six months later, the Coodys are back. On Tuesday, their grandfather Charles will celebrate his 1971 Masters Victory at the Champions Dinner. On Sunday, the Coody boys led a stacked Texas team to a tournament record 50-under total and a convincing 26-shot Victory over Big 12 at Rival Oklahoma State University at the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational at Forest Hills Golf Club.
Ranked second in the world behind Japan’s Keita Nakajima, Pierceson was playing in his first event since his injury, winning the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational individual title, just down the road from Augusta National at Forest Hill Golf Club.
Parker Coody is back on a stacked University of Texas team.
Alex Miceli / Morning Read
Coody shot 67-66-66, a 17-under-par total and six shots ahead of Evans Lewis of South Carolina, Taichi Kho of Notre Dame and Eugenio Chacarra from OSU.
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“Hit it as hard as I want,” Pierceson said of the only thing lacking in his swing from the injury. “I would call it 90% healthy. I’m still about a club Shorter through the bag than I was pre-injury but getting healthy every day and come May should be very close 100% again. ”
Fields, who has coached Jordan Spieth, Scottie Scheffler and many other current and former PGA Tour professionals, believes the Brothers may love golf more than any other player they have coached with the exception of Doug Ghim, a current player on the PGA Tour.
“I think I’ve coached a lot of guys that absolutely love the combination of golf and competition,” Fields said. “I would say Jordan’s right at the top of that, and several others. But these two guys, they just love golf. ”
Fields has had some great teams lately, with Spieth’s national championship team in 2012 and the 2016 runner-up team that included World No. 1 Scheffler.
Is the current team as good?
“They have they have the ability,” Fields said. “We’ve got enough events right now to be able to give them the opportunity to improve on the other teams’ success.”
Might Coach John Fields have another Championship team at Texas?
Alex Miceli / Morning Read
If this week proved anything to the Coody boys, who have been competing against each other since they got out of diapers, is that they want to bring a title back to Austin in their last year of college golf.
It seemed clear in talking to some of the college coaches this week that the message has been sent very loudly and very clearly, you will have to go through Texas to win the NCAA National Championship in June.
“It’s strange, Texas has been a spring team,” Pierceson Coody said. “And knowing that I’d be a healthy kind of in the middle of the spring gave me a lot of optimism that the guys would start playing well and then hopefully I could add a little something to it. Everyone found a little bit of rhythm, I knew we would play and I know we’ll continue to play well. ”
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