Greg Odom Jr. thought head coach Sam Puryear was blowing more smoke than a chimney when he was being recruited to play golf at Howard University.
“Getting recruited, I thought he was bluffing. I’m on the phone with him, he’s like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna win championships, you’re gonna get this, you’re gonna do this,’” recalled Odom Jr., who was a sophomore at Memphis at the time. “When you actually walk up on the tee of PGA Tour event and you walk to the podium after winning a championship, you look back and it’s just, ‘Wow, everything happened.’”
Sure, they were lofty goals for an upstart program getting its first crack at NCAA Div. I competition thanks to the financial backing of NBA superstar and avid golfer, Stephen Curry, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And Puryear believed every single word.
“I’ve been feeling like for the last 30 years I’ve been saying to myself the day is coming where you can put (an HBCU) product on a golf course where it can be competitive if you have the proper things in place,” Puryear said of his vision for the program. “From funding to course access to instruction to the opportunity to compete against the better programs, teams can get better. I knew that was gonna happen.”
“Did I know it was going to happen in year two? No I didn’t, but I knew it was possible.”
Howard’s inaugural 2021-22 season was just five events, two of which were match play duels against local programs Navy and Georgetown. Howard finished T-13 at the Golden Horseshoe Intercollegiate, third (out of four) at the MEAC Championship and fourth at the PGA Works Collegiate Championship, an event that highlights the best minority collegiate golfers across the country.
“I feel like we’ve always had the pieces, we just had to put them together,” said Odom Jr, who individually placed fifth at the conference championship and then won the PGA Works in 2021. “We were close the first year at PGA Works but we fell short, and I feel like that was our drive for the next season.”
The Bison closed out their second season in 2021-22 with a pair of wins at the MEAC Championship and PGA Works and placed inside the top five in five of 10 events. Odom Jr. won the individual MEAC Championship wire-to-wire and then defended his PGA Works title, fulfilling Puryear’s vision.
“We go to every event and try to win and give it our all, so I feel like the expectations haven’t changed,” said Odom Jr of the…
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