After a successful fall, the no. 12 Florida’s men’s golf team is set to begin Spring play today at the Sea Best Invitational in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The 54-hole event will be held at Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass and will be played over two days — 36 holes today, and 18 holes on Tuesday.
The tournament, hosted by Jacksonville University, will feature 15 teams, including No. 6 North Carolina, No. 37 Arkansas and No. 43 North Florida.
This season’s appearance marks the Gators’ fifth in the event. The Gators last won the event in 2011 under then-head coach Buddy Alexander. In 2015, during J.C. Deacon’s first season as the team’s head coach, they finished second.
The Gators are coming off a Fall campaign that saw them steadily improve throughout their schedule.
After a mediocre seventh-place finish at the start of the season at the Carpet Capital Collegiate in Dalton, Georgia, the Gators finished strong, picking up two wins and a second-place finish in their last four tournaments.
The 6,873-yard, par-70 Valley Course will be a test, but the Gators boast a bevy of talented youngsters who are more than capable of answering the task at hand.
"I think the biggest thing I learned is how talented they are," Deacon said of the Fall season. "I mean, we got a lot of depth. We got just a ton of skill ... they all know how good they are and how good we can be."
Talented freshmen Jorge Garcia and Sam Horsfield will open the lineup in today’s competition, followed by freshman Kyler Tate and sophomores Alejandro Tosti and Ryan Celano.
Juniors A.J. Crouch and Ryan Orr will be competing as individuals.
Horsfield, who finished third in the final tournament of the Fall season, and Garcia, who finished tied for seventh in the same event, will be the players to watch for UF.
Horsfield had an impressive Fall season with three top-five finishes in five events. In addition, his 71.47 scoring average led the team in that category.
Garcia and Tosti are also playing some of their best golf of the year entering Spring.
On Dec. 23, Garcia took home the trophy after winning the South Beach International Amateur — the 14th-ranked amateur golf tournament in the world — in Miami.
On Jan. 17, Garcia and Tosti placed second and tied for third, respectively, in the Latin America Amateur Championship in the Dominican Republic.
"He’s really turned it around," Deacon said of Garcia. "You know, when he got here in August or September, he was kind of struggling with his game and his confidence, and he worked on the things he needed to do tirelessly."
The Gators will look to build on that confidence as the rest of spring golf unfolds.
Contact Ray Boone rboone@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @rboone1994.
Alejandro Tosti putts during the 2015 SunTrust Gator Invitational on Feb. 14.
