Tech Golf Competing in Watersound Invitational – Men’s Golf — Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

THE FLATS – Georgia Tech’s 14^th-ranked golf team heads to the Panhandle of Florida to compete in its second spring event, the Watersound Invitational, which begins Monday morning at the Watersound Resort in Panama City Beach, Fla.

Twelve teams will compete over three days (Monday through Wednesday) at the Shark’s Tooth Golf Course. This year’s field features eight teams nationally ranked in the Top 50, including six of the Top 25 – No. 11 Vanderbilt, No. 12 UCLA, No. 14 Tech, No. 18 Mississippi State, No. 24 Alabama and No. 25 Notre Dame.

Tech, making its fifth appearance in this event, won the tournament in 2022 and has finished runner-up each of the last two years. Among Tech’s returning players, Hiroshi Tai (Singapore) turned in the highest finish last year, a tie for seventh place with a 6-under-par score of 210.

Head coach Bruce Heppler’s team, which has one victory (Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational) from the fall on its resume this year, opened the spring with a 10^th-place finish (out of 20 teams) at the Amer Ari Intercollegiate in Hawai’i. Redshirt junior Benjamin Reuter (Naarden, The Netherlands) led the Yellow Jackets with a tie for 13^th-place showing individually.

Tai, who won the NCAA individual championship last May in Carlsbad, Calif., and Reuter, who had a pair of top-10 finishes in the fall, are among five players who helped the Yellow Jackets advance to match play at the NCAA Championship each of the past two years. Also back are sophomores Kale Fontenot (Lafayette, La.) and Carson Kim (Yorba Linda, Calif.) and junior Aidan Tran (Fresno, Calif.).

The tournament will utilize a split-tee start format each day, with competition beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time Monday and Tuesday, and 8:30 a.m. EST Wednesday. The event began in 2021 as the Camp Creek Invitational and was the first tournament the Yellow Jackets played following the COVID-19 shutdown that scuttled the spring and fall seasons in 2020.

Benjamin Reuter at the Amer Ari Intercollegiate with a tie for 13th. (photo by Clyde Click)

TECH LINEUP – Reuter and Tai lead the five-man lineup for the Yellow Jackets in Panama City Beach, joined by Fontenot, Kim and freshman Albert Hansson (Fiskebäckskil, Sweden).

Reuter has been Tech’s top player all year thus far, posting a runner-up finish at Olympia Fields, a tie for 14^th at the Ben Hogan and a tie for 15^th at the Golf Club of Georgia Collegiate Invitational. He is ranked No. 28 in the Scoreboard NCAA…