EDMOND, Okla. \u2013 There\u2019s a legitimate argument for the 2017-18 Oklahoma State men\u2019s golf team being the best of all-time. Those Cowboys won 10 tournaments, including the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek, the first time in four tries that the storied program had come through on home soil to lift a national title.<\/p>\n
But what made this squad so legendary was the fact that it put a whopping six players on the PGA Tour \u2013 winners Viktor Hovland, Austin Eckroat and current LIV player Matthew Wolff, plus cardholders Kris Ventura, Zach Bauchou and Sam Stevens, who was the sixth man when the Cowboys beat Alabama, 5-0. Also on the roster was Stratton Nolen, the 2016 Big 12 individual champ, who is now the Cowboys assistant under Alan Bratton.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could\u2019ve put two teams in the national championship,\u201d Eckroat said.<\/p>\n
While Wolff earned the clinching point by rolling in the winning birdie putt on the 15th hole, sealing a 4-and-3 win over Davis Riley and the Cowboys\u2019 11th NCAA Championship, the highlight of the day was Bauchou, who turned in a front-nine 29 and blitzed Jonathan Hardee, 8 and 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started tearing up on the 10th tee because I knew we were going to win,\u201d Bauchou said.<\/p>\n
Eight years later, Bauchou became an inspiration for the newest set of Cowboys. On the morning of last year\u2019s NCAA final against Virginia, Bratton told his players, all freshmen and sophomores, to channel their inner-Bauchou. They responded, taking down the Cavaliers, 4-1, to cap a season that included seven wins, including each of their last five tournaments. Earlier in the season, Oklahoma State snapped the longest losing streak in school history \u2013 19 events \u2013 before not finishing worse than third all spring and doing something that the 2018 group failed to do, win a Big 12 team trophy.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen what lies ahead for Preston Stout, Ethan Fang, Eric Lee, Gaven Lane and Filip Fahlberg Johnsson. Maybe they, too, can all end up on the PGA Tour like their 2018 predecessors.<\/p>\n
For now, they\u2019re tasked with going back-to-back this week at Omni La Costa, which would be another program first. Oklahoma State enters the 2026 NCAA Championship ranked fifth in the nation, winners of four tournaments, including another conference crown, and battle tested \u2013 literally.<\/p>\n
The Battle of the Cowboys was a concept dreamed up by Bratton, hoping to highlight his decorated program and his two most recent championship teams by pitting them against each other in a match. The made-for-YouTube event, produced by Good Good, was held in late April at Oak Tree National in Edmond, Oklahoma, and debuted on Golf Channel\u2019s YouTube page<\/a> Friday, during the first round of this year\u2019s national championship.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The matchups:<\/p>\n Hovland vs. StoutVentura vs. Fahlberg JohnssonEckroat vs. FangWolff vs. LaneBauchou vs. LeeStevens vs. John Wild (who was the sixth man last year)<\/p>\n \u201cI think the old boys are still the top of the food chain,\u201d Hovland said. \u201cI would expect us to show up and dream crush like we did in 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that the 2025 guys weren\u2019t up to the task.<\/p>\n \u201cA couple years ago I\u2019d probably be pretty intimidated by Matt,\u201d Lane said, \u201cbut you look at a lot of players that go to LIV, Cam Smith, other guys, I don\u2019t know if the care for golf is quite the same. But I don\u2019t know, we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n Added Wolff: \u201cOh, I\u2019m still plenty motivated. He\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMOND, Okla. \u2013 There\u2019s a legitimate argument for the 2017-18 Oklahoma State men\u2019s golf team being the best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-705119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}