Jason D’Amore is a stats and numbers guy. Still, few rounds send him to the record books for motivation.
After his Loyola Marymount team went 17 under in the opening round of the Golfweek Fall Challenge at True Blue Golf Club on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, D’Amore decided to do a little digging. Knowing it’s sometimes hard to follow up a really good round, D’Amore decided to search for team and individual records to change the narrative.
“I just threw some numbers at them and had them more along the lines of hey, let’s go break some records and shoot these numbers versus being in first or second or third place,” D’Amore said. “We can’t control what the other teams are going to do but we know what we’re capable of. We set some goals for ourselves each day that were more based upon us than anyone else.”
The shift worked, as Loyola Marymount played the following 36 holes in 30 under and won the team title by a shot over Washington State on Sept. 12. The Lions landed three players inside the top 7 while individual medalist honors went to Washington State’s Pono Yanagi and Arkansas State’s Thomas Schmidt, who both finished at 17 under.
Scoring: Golfweek Fall Challenge
College golf may be an individual sport, but D’Amore knows that, for better or worse, players feed off each other. At True Blue, the Lions kept the goal-setting focused on themselves, letting the chips fall around them.
In the history of the Golfweek Fall Challenge, only three teams have gone below 30 under for 54 holes at True Blue. Campbell set the scoring record of 48 under when it won in 2018. The individual record remains with Jacksonville State alum Tomas Anderson, whose 19-under total in 2014 included a final-round 60.
How does a team go 47 under? D’Amore makes a case for consistency more than fireworks. Loyola Marymount counted at least three scores in the 60s in each round and never counted anything higher than 72. Inviting conditions also played a role, he noted.
“The greens were soft, the ball was going far, there wasn’t a lot of wind,” D’Amato said. “It was just kind of one of those perfect recipes where you got some guys that could play some good golf and the golf course really just didn’t have a ton of defense because of the conditions.”
Loyola Marymount was two shots off the lead entering the final round and was paired with Washington State and Western Carolina on the last day. All three teams fed off each other with birdies flying.
As his team approached the final four holes, D’Amato texted his assistant coach Michael McCabe that he thought his team would need to reach 55 under to come out ahead of Washington State.
The closing gauntlet backed everyone up.
“Once we got to 16, 17, 18 it was a lot of playing telephone and trying to figure out where we were,” D’Amato said.
D’Amato and McCabe tried to gather as much intel as they could in the final holes and help their players make the best decisions possible. In the end, they edged Washington State by one shot. D’Amato was proud of the way his players remained in the present to finish the job.
A win in the first tournament out has the effect of creating a platform on which a team can build the rest of the season. The Lions last won a team title in the spring of 2021, when they won two tournaments back-to-back.
“One of the guys said something about, this makes the 5:30 a.m. wakeup calls for workouts worth it,” D’Amato said. “My response was it does, but it also makes you excited for the next 5:30 a.m. workout because you know that those days are what leads to winning a championship and having a chance to win.”
When you’ve got this kind of momentum, D’Amato notes, you don’t want much time off. Loyola Marymount was headed back home to Los Angeles after the True Blue title only to head north to San Francisco in another four days to play the USF/Howard Intercollegiate at TPC Harding Park.
“If we didn’t play great this week,” he said, “we’d be hoping we had awhile but since we played well, it will be nice to get going again.”
No rest for the winners.
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