Academic Excellence

  • Only 18 student-athletes in Clemson history have earned All-America honors on the field/course and in the classroom in the same year. Two of the 18 are golfers, Jonathan Byrd in 1998-99 and 1999-00 and D.J. Trahan in 2001-02. Trahan actually accomplished the feat the year he was named National Player of the Year and was named third-team Academic All-American by CoSIDA. He is the only Clemson athlete to be named a National Player of the Year and Academic All-American in the same year. Byrd is one of three Clemson athletes in history to do it twice.
  • Current Clemson golfer Crawford Reeves has been named first-team Academic All-ACC each of his first three years. He will have a chance to be the first four-time selection in Clemson history in 2012-13.
  • Two Clemson golfers have been named an Academic Scholar by the Golf Coaches Association three times. Jason Griffith accomplished the feat from 1999-90 and Oswald Drawdy did it from 1988-90.
  • The Clemson golf team has had a team GPA of 3.0 or better 19 of the last 30 semesters. Six times in the last 13 years the team has posted at least a 3.0 team GPA and ranked in the top 16 in the nation in the NCAA Tournament. The team has a current streak of three consecutive semesters with at least a 3.0.
  • Ben Martin, a senior in 2010, was a three-time selection to the All-ACC academic team and a two-time selection as an Academic Scholar by the Golf Coaches Association. He was runnerup in the 2009 US Amateur and played in the 2010 Masters. He is now on the Web.com Tour.
  • Six of the 10 members of the golf team made the Academic Honor roll for the first semester of the 2012-13 academic year, including Miller Capps and Hayden Garrett, who each made a perfect 4.0.

Award Winners

  • Charles Warren became Clemson's first NCAA Champion in 1997 when he captured the championship at Conway Farms Country Club near Chicago, IL. He defeated Brad Elder of Texas in a playoff and overcame a three-shot deficit to Jason Gore of Pepperdine during the final round. Warren never led outright until he made the final putt on the first playoff hole. Warren won the Dave Williams Award as the top senior golfer in the nation the following year.
  • D.J. Trahan won the Ben Hogan Award and the Jack Nicklaus Award in 2002 as a junior. During the 2002 season Trahan won three tournaments, including the NCAA East Regional. He posted a 70.33 stroke average, still the best in Clemson history for a season.
  • Kyle Stanley also won the Ben Hogan Award, in 2009 as a junior. He finished second at the NCAA Tournament as a freshman and a junior. He turned professional after his junior year.
  • Clemson has had 53 All-America selections over the years, including at least one in nine consecutive years from 1996-04. Corbin Mills was named a third-team All-American in 2012. Clemson has had 14 first-team All-Americans, 11 second-team selections, seven third-team selections and 21 honorable mention selections. Kyle Stanley was a first-team selection as a freshman in 2007, the only freshman in Clemson history to be named a first-team All-American. He was also first-team in 2009.
  • Six different Clemson players have been a two-time first-team All-American. Those players are Chris Patton, Charles Warren, John Engler, Lucas Glover, D.J. Trahan and Kyle Stanley.

Amateur Championships

  • Clemson players have had a strong heritage when it comes to success in national amateur events. The most noteworthy championship took place in 1989 when then Clemson rising senior Chris Patton won the US Amateur at Merion Country Club in Ardmore, PA. He then went on to be the low amateur at the 1990 Masters, finishing in 39th place.
  • Three other Clemson golfers finished as the runner-up at the US Amateur, Parker Moore in 1976, Danny Ellis in 1993 and Ben Martin in 2009. Michael Hoey, who played at Clemson from 1998-2000, won the British Amateur in 2001.
  • Three Clemson golfers have won the United States Public Links Championship. Kevin Johnson won the title in 1987 and D.J. Trahan won it after his freshman year in 2000. Corbin Mills won the same event in 2011 and played in the 2012 Masters.
  • The Sunnehanna Amateur is one of the top amateur tournaments each summer. A Clemson golfer won the event four consecutive years between 2001-04. The list included current PGA professional Lucas Glover.
  • In the summer of 2008, Phillip Mollica won the Monroe Amateur and is the only person to win that prestigious national tournament twice.

Coaching Excellence

  • Clemson Head Coach Larry Penley is fourth in NCAA Golf history in tournament victories with 63. That includes a pair of victories in 2012. He is second among ACC coaches in history behind Wake Forest's Jesse Haddock, who won 83.
  • Penley is one of the few active coaches who has already been inducted into the College Golf Hall of Fame. At the age of 44 in 2003 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the first coach in any sport in Clemson sports history to be inducted in his sports Hall of Fame while he was still coaching. Current Clemson baseball coach will join Penley with that distinction in January of 2014.
  • Penley was named National Coach of the Year by the Golf Coaches Association and Golfweek in 2003, the year he led the Clemson program to the NCAA Championship. He is a six-time ACC Coach of the Year, one of just two coaches in league history to win that award six times.
  • Penley is in his 30th year as Clemson's head coach. He has led the Tigers to seven regional championships, more than any other coach at the Division I level. He has taken Clemson to the NCAA Tournament all of his previous 29 years and has led the Tigers to a top 20 finish 21 times, more than any other coach in any sport in Clemson history.
  • Prior to Penley, Clemson had great leadership under Bobby Robinson, who led the program from 1975-83. It was Robinson who took Clemson to its first NCAA Tournament in 1980, its first ACC title in 1982, and its first NCAA top 5 finish in 1983. The Clemson practice facility is named in his honor.

Conference Championship Tradition

  • Clemson has won the ACC Championship nine times (including a co-championship in 1990). Clemson won the title in 1982, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004. Clemson has finished in the top four of the event 13 of the last 15 years.
  • Clemson has had the individual medalist at the ACC Championship seven times. Charles Warren won the event in 1997 and 1998, the only two-time champion from Clemson. He also won the NCAA Championship in 1997 and is one of just two golfers to win the ACC title and the NCAA title in the same year.
  • David May was co-medalist in 2009 with a 206 score, tied with Matt Hill of NC State.
  • Clemson has had 35 different players named first-team All-ACC a total of 71 times. Clemson had at least two different All-ACC golfers from 1997-2007. D.J. Trahan and Jonathan Byrd are the only four-time first-team All-ACC golfers in Clemson history.

International Competition

  • Clemson has been prominent in recent history of the Walker Cup. Between 1997 and 2003, Clemson had at least one representative at each Walker Cup, including 2001 when Lucas Glover and D.J. Trahan were members of the United States team and Michael Hoey was on the Great Britain team. Six players with ties to Clemson have participated in the Walker Cup since 1997.
  • The Palmer Cup is another amateur competition held each year. Between 1997-2004 Clemson had 13 selections to the United States and Great Britain squads. That includes John Engler who is one of the few three-time selections in the history of the event. D.J. Trahan was a two-time selection to the US Team and was the team captain in 2002. Larry Penley served s the head coach of the tam in 2004.
  • Last year Corbin Mills was a member of the US Palmer Cup team prior to turning professional.
  • Professionally, Lucas Glover was a member of the winning United States President's Cup teams in 2007 and 2009.

NCAA Tournament Excellence

  • Clemson has been to the NCAA Tournament 32 years overall, including an active streak of 31 consecutive years. The last time Clemson was not in the NCAA Tournament was the spring of 1981. That is the longest streak of NCAA Tournament appearances in Clemson sports history and the second longest active streak in Division I college golf. Clemson had a streak of 23 straight years in the NCAA National Tournament from 1982-2004.
  • Clemson has won seven NCAA Regional championships in its history and no one has more since the NCAA adopted the regional format in 1989. Clemson has had a pair of "three-peats", winning from 1993-95 and 2002-04.
  • Clemson had seven consecutive top 10 national finishes at the NCAA Tournament from 1997-2003. Only the Clemson men's soccer team (1973-79) and the Clemson men's tennis program (1980-86) also had seven-year streaks of top 10 finishes at NCAA Tournaments.
  • When Clemson finished fifth place finish at the 2008 NCAA Tournament at Purdue was the eighth time Larry Penley had a top five finish.

National Championship Season of 2003

  • Clemson won the NCAA Tournament in 2003, the fourth national championship in Clemson sports history. It was the first title in any sport for the Clemson program in 16 years.
  • During the 2003 season Clemson won the ACC Championship, the NCAA East Regional and the NCAA National Tournament at Oklahoma State. Clemson became the first Division I school to win its conference, regional and national tournament in the same year.
  • Larry Penley's Tigers won six tournaments in 2003, a record for a Clemson season and more than any other Division I program.
  • The 2002-03 Clemson team never finished lower than third in any tournament the entire year and had an incredible 183-8-3 won loss record against the field in stoke play events, a 95.1 percent figure. Clemson finished first or second in 13 of the 14 events and was ranked number one in every poll from the preseason to the final poll.

Pipeline to the PGA

  • Clemson had four players in the Masters in 2012, the most in one year in history and the second most in the nation behind Oklahoma State. Clemson players in golf's most prestigious event were Kyle Stanley, Lucas Glover, Jonathan Byrd and Corbin Mills. Mills qualified as an amateur after winning the 2011 US Public Links.
  • Clemson had six players on the PGA Tour in 2011 and five in 2012. Clemson has had at least four players on Tour each of the last eight years.
  • Jonathan Byrd (5), Lucas Glover (3), D.J. Trahan (2) and Kyle Stanley (1) have combined for 11 PGA Tour wins since 2002. Byrd won consecutive PGA Tour events that he entered from the Justin Timberlake Invitational at the end of the 2010 season, then won the Tournament of Champions in a playoff to start 2011.
  • Byrd won the Justin Timberlake with a hole-in-one on the fourth playoff hole, the first time anyone has won a tournament in that fashion.
  • A Clemson golfer has won a PGA Tour event nine consecutive years. Only Arizona State and UNLVA can also make that claim entering the 2013 season. Kyle Stanley won the Phoenix Open in 2012 to continue the streak. Lucas Glover and Jonathan Byrd both won tournaments in 2011 and competed in a playoff to win the Wells Fargo Invitational in Charlotte.
  • Lucas Glover became the first former Tiger to win a major in 2009 when he won the US Open at Bethpage Black. Glover defeated both Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in winning the event. He then finished fifth at the PGA in August to finish ninth on the PGA money list, the highest money list finish by a former Tiger.
  • Michael Hoey finished 25th on the European Tour in 2011 and won two events, including a win over Rory McIlroy at the Dunhill Cup.

Poll Presence

  • The history of college golf is not very long, but since there have been polls, Clemson has been omnipresent. Between 1996 and 2004 Clemson ranked in the final top 10 eight of the nine seasons and in the top 20 each year.
  • Clemson had a streak of 105 consecutive polls ranked in the top 10 in the nation from December 4, 1996 through May 7, 2004. Within that streak, Clemson was ranked in the top five 62 straight polls (March 11, 1998 through June 15, 2001), and for 89 of 90 polls between March 11, 1998 to May 7, 2004.
  • As far as individuals are concerned, Clemson has had 27 players ranked in the top 25 in the final Sagarin rankings since 1996. The highest ranking for a Clemson player is number-two by D.J. Trahan in 2002 and 2003. Kyle Stanley finished fifth in 2009.
  • Clemson has been ranked in the top 25 in 180 of the last 194 Sagarin polls in the top 10 in 132 of the last 194.