FGCU MGOLF: Pinehurst Intercollegiate Preview

The FGCU men's golf team is set to tackle the Pinehurst Intercollegiate March 8-10, which is slated to be contested on the par-71, 6,937-yard Pinehurst No. 8 Golf Course in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

The tournament will be a 54-hole event stretched across three days and is being hosted by the Pinehurst Tournament Office. Friday's opening round will be a staggered start, and the Eagles will begin teeing off at 8 a.m. on the 10th tee. They will be battling frigid conditions, as the temperatures are slated to remain in the mid-50's for the first two rounds.

FGCU is coming off back-to-back quality performances after winning the Colin Montgomerie Invitational and finishing runner-up at the Fort Lauderdale Intercollegiate. In five total rounds this spring, the Green and Blue have shot a combined score of 1-over-par 1,441 and haven't posted a round higher than 4-over 292.

The recent results have helped FGCU skyrocket up the polls, as the team has ascended 27 spots all the way to No. 136 in the latest Golf Stat rankings.

LINEUP
1. Andrew Potter
2. Cole Castro
3. Chase Bigham
4. Tate Heintzelman
5. Remec Carlson

Potter has posted stellar results so far this spring, tying for fifth at the Texas tournament and landing in solo seventh in Fort Lauderdale. He hasn't shot worse than even-par 72 in any of his five rounds, and he has a cumulative score of 4-under. Castro is coming off a career week where he shot a personal-low 66 in the second round and led the Eagles with a T-4 performance.

Bigham continues to be a mainstay in the lineup, finishing in the top 25 in both events and shooting par or better in three of his five rounds. Heintzelman has been a tad more streaky than his compatriots, which resulted in a T-5 effort at the Colin Montgomerie tourney thanks to an opening 69 that led to at 1-under 143. He put together two solid rounds to open play in the most-recent event but slipped in the final round into a tie for 37th.

Carlson - in his third year with FGCU - will be making his first appearance as part of the lineup. He competed three times over the last two years as an individual (or with FGCU's 'B' team), posting a career-best finish of T-24 at the 2018 Randy Grimes Memorial Shootout.

Complete Field [Sorted by GolfStat ranking as of 3/6]:
114 - Davidson
131 - Radford
136 - FGCU
150 - Eastern Kentucky
181 - Ohio
185 - Dayton
191 - Belmont
195 - Morehead State
197 - Old Dominion
201 - Xavier
225 - Marshall
230 - Longwood
270 - Siena
141 (D-III) - Wisconsin-Lutheran

This will be the first time FGCU will have ventured to the state of North Carolina since competing in East Carolina's Invitational in Greenville, N.C., April 3-4, 2016. The Eagles have competed at Pinehurst one other time in school history, which was a third-place effort in 2003.

The Pinehurst Resort is home to the famed No. 2 course, which has been host to four PGA Tour majors. Pinehurst No. 2 has hosted 1936 PGA Championship (won by Denny Shute over Jimmy Thomson), the 1999 U.S. Open (won by Payne Stewart over runner-up Phil Mickelson), the 2005 U.S. Open (won by Michael Campbell over runner-up Tiger Woods) and most-recently the 2014 U.S. Open (won by Martin Kaymer over runners-up Rickie Fowler & Erik Compton).