Ryan Hall is having a historically elite season for Gamecocks. The nationals are next
Ryan Hall prepared for the NCAA Golf Championships with a recent day of 7-under-par 63 at Florence Country Club.
No surprise there. Hall has been bashing par in college golf tournaments in fashioning one of the finest seasons in the University of South Carolina record book.
In 10 tournaments, he won twice, posted four top-5s, six top-10s and nothing worse than 18th against mostly high-caliber SEC competition. He’s the first Carolina golfer to have a sub-70 scoring average for a full season, and his career average is currently the program’s best.
The USC junior is ranked No. 6 among college players by Golfstat and has earned a boxcar load of honors, including first-team All-SEC, a berth on the U.S. Arnold Palmer team and a place among 11 finalists for the Fred Haskins Award, presented annually to the nation’s top college male golfer.
And now he looks for a bigger prize — the national individual title.
“I’ve got momentum; I feel pretty good about my game,” Hall said in looking toward the NCAAs that begin Friday and run through Wednesday at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. “The last three (tournaments) have been good.”
That stretch includes wins in the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational in April and the NCAA Regional in Albuquerque, New Mexico last week.
In between, he earned a spot in sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open with a top-five finish in a local qualifying at Columbia Country Club.
“Ryan’s one of the hardest workers we’ve had,” USC coach Bill McDonald said. “The thing is, he has a lot of room for improvement. He won the regional playing good, but not his best, golf.”
Since his freshman year, Hall has seen his driving and putting improve, and, he said: “I worked really hard on the mental side last year. It’s evolving. I want to have a complete game.”
“My driving has been really good,” he said. “I’ve kept the ball in play almost all the time. I can’t remember hitting one out of bounds this year. I got a new putter this year that’s really worked well.”
Hall has always been around the game; his dad, Brian, played college golf and is a golf course superintendent in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Although he played baseball and basketball, too, “I just fell in love with golf,” the younger Hall said.
Growing up in the Knoxville area, he played junior golf and a turning point came in a second-place finish in a tournament won by the Braden Thornberry, who would win 11 college tournaments and the 2017 Haskins award for Ole Miss.
Hall would earn all-star honors in AJGA competition and advanced to match-play in the 2017 U.S. Junior Amateur. Former USC assistant Alex Hamilton spotted Hall’s potential at a junior tournament, and McDonald liked what he saw, too.
“You could see his desire,” McDonald said, “and he had such a tremendous upside.”
“I just fell in love with Carolina, the coaches, the players, everything,” Hall said.
He will be without his teammates in the nationals. The Gamecocks finished ninth in the regional, but Hall advanced to the individual competition.
Afterward, it’s U.S. Open Sectional qualifying on June 7 and the summer amateur tournaments. He hopes to earn a place in the U.S. Amateur for the third straight year.
“I don’t really set goals,” said Hall, who since January has been working with teaching pro Paul Woodbury, a former USC player who is director of instruction and junior golf at Florence Country Club. “I want to get better every day on the golf course, and I want to have fun.
“I’ll see where the game takes me. I’ll be back at Carolina next year; I enjoy the college experience. Then I plan to see what I can do playing professionally.”
For now, his focus centers on the NCAA Championship on a course that he played in junior golf.
“I don’t remember the specific details,” Hall said, “but I do recall it’s very scoreable.”
The way he’s playing, he makes all courses scoreable.